Tag Archives: Google Meet

Improving Google Meet attendance reports and making them available to more customers

Quick launch summary 

We previously launched Google Meet attendance reports for education meetings. We’re now making several enhancements to provide more access, control, and visibility into meetings and live stream reports. Specifically, we’re adding: 
  • Live streaming viewership data. Attendance reports will now include data on live streaming viewers in a separate tab. Live stream data will include total viewer count and viewers over the course of the live stream. 
  • Admin control over attendance tracking. Admins can choose whether an organizational unit can use the attendance tracking feature or not. 
  • New settings to control report creation. Meeting organizers who are not in Education domains can choose whether a report is created for the meeting via in-meeting settings or from the Calendar event before the meeting starts. Meeting organizers at Education domains will continue to automatically receive attendance reports for meetings with five or more participants. 
  • In-call viewer count for live stream events. Live stream hosts and meeting attendees (not live stream viewers) will now see a count of the total number of live stream participants when joining via Meet from a desktop or computer. 
  • Attendance reports for more customers. We are making attendance reports available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus customers. Previously, they were only available to Enterprise for Education customers. 

Getting started 

  • Admins: 
    • Attendance and live stream reports will be available by default for your users, but you can make them unavailable to your domain or specific OUs and groups. Visit the Help Center to learn more about managing attendance reports for your organization. 
    • In-call viewer count for live streams will be ON by default and can’t be turned off. Visit our Help Center to learn more about live streaming a video meeting. 
  • End users: 
    • Users in Enterprise for Education domains: Meeting organizers will continue to receive reports automatically for meetings with five or more participants. 
    • Users in other domains: Attendance reports will be OFF by default, but meeting organizers can turn them ON for any meeting using the meeting settings during the call or the calendar event before the call. Visit the Help Center to learn more about how to turn attendance reports on or off in Google Meet. 
    • All users: In-call viewer count for live streams will be ON by default and can’t be turned off. Visit our Help Center to learn more about live streaming a video meeting.

Example of a live stream attendance report 



Live stream viewer count is shown in the top left corner of the screen 

Rollout pace 

Live streaming data in reports: 
Settings to control report creation (non-Education organizations only): 
In-call viewer count for live streams: 

Availability 

  • Available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard and Enterprise Plus, as well as G Suite Enterprise for Education customers 
  • Not available to Google Workspace Business Starter, Business Standard, as well as G Suite Basic, Business, Education, and Nonprofits customers 

Resources 

Roadmap 

Bringing breakout rooms in Google Meet to more Google Workspace customers

Quick launch summary

Last month, we launched breakout rooms in Google Meet to G Suite Enterprise for Education customers. We’re now making breakout rooms available to Google Workspace, Essentials, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus customers, as well as G Suite Business and Enterprise for Education customers.

In addition, we’re introducing the following new features to improve your experience in breakout rooms:
  • Ask for help: Participants can ask for help when they are in a breakout room, and the moderator can see the request from the moderator panel and join the breakout room.
  • Timer/countdown: The moderator can set up a timer for a breakout session. Participants will see a banner to keep track of how much more time they have in the breakout room. They’ll also be alerted when there are 30 seconds left so that they can wrap up the discussion and, when time is up, participants will be prompted to go back to the main call.
  • Additional supported participants: Dial-in phone participants can now be assigned to breakout rooms. Starting in two weeks, anonymous users will also be able to be added to breakout rooms.

Getting started

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
  • End users: This feature will be available by default. Visit the Help Center to learn more about using breakout rooms in Meet.

Rollout pace 

Availability

  • Available to Workspace Essentials, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus, as well as G Suite Business and Enterprise for Education customers
  • Not available to Workspace Business Starter, as well as G Suite Basic, Education, and Nonprofits customers

Resources

Roadmap

 

Virtually raise your hand to ask a question in Google Meet

Quick launch summary

Video meeting participants can now let you know if they have a question or indicate that they would like to speak by raising their hand in Meet. In large meetings, this helps to increase participation while not disrupting the flow of the conversation and helps to prevent people from interrupting one another.

To raise your hand in Meet, click on the “Raise Hand” button on the bottom bar during the meeting. Once the button is pressed, it will change to a “Lower Hand” button, which can be clicked to lower your hand.
Raise and lower your hand in Meet

When a participant raises their hand, the meeting’s moderator will see a hand icon in their video preview. If the moderator is presenting in another tab, they’ll get a sound notification when someone raises their hand.

The moderator will also be able to see all raised hands in the order they were raised in the meeting participant list panel to help them address questions accordingly. The moderator can lower a specific person’s hand or lower all hands.

Moderator view of raised hands


Getting started

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
  • End users: This feature will be ON by default. Visit the Help Center to learn more about using hand raising in Meet.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to Workspace Essentials, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus well as G Suite Business, Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits customers
  • Not available to Workspace Business Starter as well as G Suite Basic customers. Not available to users with personal Google Accounts

Resources

Roadmap

Accept knocks in bulk in Google Meet

Quick launch summary 

You can now accept all pending knocks in bulk in Google Meet. Admitting participants or students all at once helps limit interruptions during the video call. Note, only the meeting organizer can see or approve requests to join a meeting. 

Admit all participants at once in Meet

Getting started 


Rollout pace 

  • Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on November 4, 2020 
  • Scheduled Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than15 days for feature visibility) starting on November 16, 2020 

Availability 

  • Available to Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits customers and users with personal Google Accounts 

Resources 

Replace your background in Google Meet

What’s changing

You can now replace your background with an image in Google Meet. You can either use Google’s hand-picked images, which include office spaces, landscapes, and abstract backgrounds, or upload your own image.




Who’s impacted


End users

Why you’d use it


Custom backgrounds can help you show more of your personality, as well as help hide your surroundings.

Additional details

We recently launched the ability to filter out disruptive background noise and blur your background in Google Meet. Together, these features reduce audio and visual distractions, and help ensure more productive meetings.

Virtual backgrounds work directly within your browser and do not require an extension or any additional software. At launch, they’ll work on ChromeOS and on the Chrome browser on Windows and Mac desktop devices. Support on Meet mobile apps will be coming soon; we’ll announce on the Google Workspace Updates blog when they become available.

Getting started

Admins: At launch, there will be no admin control for this feature. Admin controls to select which organizational units can use custom and preset backgrounds for meetings they organize will be introduced later this year. We’ll announce on the Google Workspace Updates blog when they’re available.

End users: This feature is OFF by default. Visit our Help Center to learn more about how to change your background on Google Meet.




Rollout pace

  • Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout to eligible devices (up to 7 days for feature visibility) starting on October 30, 2020
  • Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout to eligible devices (up to 7 days for feature visibility) starting on November 6, 2020

Availability

  • Available to Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits customers and users with personal Google accounts.
  • Selecting your own picture is not available to participants of meetings organized by Education customers.

Resources

Roadmap

Make Google Meet or an add-on your default video conferencing option in Google Calendar

Quick launch summary

We’re giving you more control over how your end users choose between available conferencing providers when creating Calendar events by introducing a new Admin console setting to “Make Google Meet the default video conferencing provider."


Starting November 16, all users in organization units (OUs) with Meet set as the default provider and both with Meet and at least one other 3rd party video conferencing add-on enabled will see a sectioned button to add video conferencing when creating events. The’ll have:
  • The option to add Meet video conference with a single click
  • The option to add third party video conferencing via the separate dropdown
New conferencing UI for users creating events in Calendar



As an administrator you can install add-ons for all users with domain-wide installs via the Google Workspace marketplace or allow users to install add-ons themselves.

Getting started

Admins: This feature will be ON by default and can be disabled at the OU level. Since this feature will not roll out to end users until November 16, admins can use those 30 days to modify their settings as necessary before they take effect.

Visit the Help Center to learn more about controlling video conferencing for Calendar events in your organization. Note, this setting only affects the experience for users with both Google Meet and conferencing add-ons installed.

Video conferencing setting in the Admin console


You will still have the ability to make an Add-on your default video conferencing provider.

If you prefer your users to only use an Add-On provider:

End users: There is no end user setting for this feature. Visit the Help Center to learn more about adding or removing a video conference from your Calendar event.

Rollout pace

Admin setting

End user changes

Availability

  • Available to Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits customers

Resources

Make Google Meet or an add-on your default video conferencing option in Google Calendar

Quick launch summary

We’re giving you more control over how your end users choose between available conferencing providers when creating Calendar events by introducing a new Admin console setting to “Make Google Meet the default video conferencing provider."


Starting November 16, all users in organization units (OUs) with Meet set as the default provider and both with Meet and at least one other 3rd party video conferencing add-on enabled will see a sectioned button to add video conferencing when creating events. The’ll have:
  • The option to add Meet video conference with a single click
  • The option to add third party video conferencing via the separate dropdown
New conferencing UI for users creating events in Calendar



As an administrator you can install add-ons for all users with domain-wide installs via the Google Workspace marketplace or allow users to install add-ons themselves.

Getting started

Admins: This feature will be ON by default and can be disabled at the OU level. Since this feature will not roll out to end users until November 16, admins can use those 30 days to modify their settings as necessary before they take effect.

Visit the Help Center to learn more about controlling video conferencing for Calendar events in your organization. Note, this setting only affects the experience for users with both Google Meet and conferencing add-ons installed.

Video conferencing setting in the Admin console


You will still have the ability to make an Add-on your default video conferencing provider.

If you prefer your users to only use an Add-On provider:

End users: There is no end user setting for this feature. Visit the Help Center to learn more about adding or removing a video conference from your Calendar event.

Rollout pace

Admin setting

End user changes

Availability

  • Available to Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits customers

Resources

New look and feel for the Google Meet Android mobile app

Quick launch summary

We’re updating the user interface (UI) of the Google Meet Android mobile apps. The new mobile UI will have the same look and feel as that of the meeting experience in the Gmail app and was previously rolled out to the Meet app on iOS.

Check out the original announcement for more details on these changes.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits customers as well as users with personal Google Accounts

Resources

New look and feel for the Google Meet Android mobile app

Quick launch summary

We’re updating the user interface (UI) of the Google Meet Android mobile apps. The new mobile UI will have the same look and feel as that of the meeting experience in the Gmail app and was previously rolled out to the Meet app on iOS.

Check out the original announcement for more details on these changes.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits customers as well as users with personal Google Accounts

Resources

Create breakout rooms for more engaged distance learning in Google Meet

What’s changing

Organizers of Enterprise for Education meetings can now use breakout rooms to divide participants into smaller groups during video calls in Meet. Participants can then easily rejoin the original meeting following their smaller group discussion.

This feature will be launching to additional Google Workspace editions later this year.

Use breakout rooms in Meet

Who’s impacted

End users

Why you’d use it

With this highly-requested feature, educators can offer increased engagement in their classes by splitting students up for simultaneous small group discussions or working time. Moderators can also jump between breakout rooms to monitor and participate in discussions.

Additional details

You can create up to 100 breakout rooms in a call. Call participants will then be randomly and equally distributed across the rooms. You can also manually move people into different rooms. Check out the Help Center for more details.

While only event creators can create breakout rooms, anyone with a Google account that is joining from the web or through the Meet app can be a participant.

Breakout rooms must be created during a video call on a computer.

Getting started

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
  • End users: This feature will be available by default. Visit the Help Center to learn more about using breakout rooms in Meet.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to Enterprise for Education customers
  • Not available to Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education, and Nonprofits customers. Stay tuned to the Google Workspace Updates blog for information when this launches to additional customers.

Resources

Roadmap