If you’re traveling, working in a remote office or just temporarily working from home, using Google Meet is a great way to collaborate and to maintain your “in-person” work relationships. It makes it easy to hold virtual meetings.
With a click of the mouse on a unique URL dedicated to a specific meeting, everyone can easily join from home or from the road and collaborate together just as if you were all in the same conference room. In a way, you are.
Google Meet can also help you figure out how to effectively manage a remote team or keep in touch with clients, giving you an easy alternative that’s close to meeting face-to-face. Here’s a look at how to use Google Meet for remote working, must-have meetings and keeping projects on track.
What is Google Meet?
Google Hangouts Meet, better known simply as Meet, is part of Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) cloud collaboration tools. This video-conferencing tool grew out of the suite’s Hangouts Chat function to deliver an even better video conferencing experience for work.
Google Meet supports a number of browser platforms including Chrome, IOS, Android, Mozilla® Firefox®, Apple® Safari®, Microsoft® Internet Explorer® 11 (with plugins) and Microsoft Edge®. You also can use it in a conference room with Meet hardware and Chromebox and Chromebase for meetings.
Users can join a video meeting through their browser and mobile app, a Google Calendar invite, a meeting link URL or code, dial-in by phone or through Meet hardware, Chrombox and Chromebase for meetings.
Typically, depending on the Google Workspace package you use, you can add up to 250 participants using a Google Meet session. Here’s the breakdown of that:
- Google Workspace Basic and Google Workspace for Education — Up to 100 participants
- Google Workspace Business — Up to 150 participants
- Google Workspace Enterprise and Enterprise for Education — Up to 250 participants
The easiest way to use Meet is just to keep a browser tab open to https://meet.google.com during your day. This allows Meet to show your calendar for the day with links to your meetings, but you can also join or start meetings from your Calendar, Gmail or Chat on the web or on your mobile device, even when you work from anywhere.
Managing a Remote Team with Google Meet
If your organization is working from home for the first time, you’re probably wondering how to effectively manage your remote team from afar. It’s not as difficult as you think.
Consider taking some of these steps for how to use Google Meet for remote working and maintain the collaborative environment you enjoyed in the office with your team.
Schedule one-on-one meetings with your team members.
Regular touch-bases like this are always important but when your team is new to remote work it may be helpful to meet even more frequently. Use Meet to make sure everyone has a work environment that looks professional and is free from distractions and that they’re adjusting to remote work successfully. You don’t want anyone to have remote worker FOMO (fear of missing out).
Have regular “stand up” meetings.
Stand-ups are a great way to check-in with your team in the office without taking too much of everyone’s time. When you’re all working remotely, a quick daily “stand up” can help maintain your team’s focus and ensure that everyone is adjusting and working together
Don’t limit yourself to email.
If you find yourself in a back-and-forth email conversation, try using Meet instead. Open that last email and hover your mouse cursor over the person’s name and Gmail will give you the option to start a video call. Don’t spend an hour trading emails about something when you can talk face-to-face and resolve the question more quickly
Tips for All Remote Workers Using Meet
Here are some other great things for all remote workers to keep in mind when it come using video conferencing for internal or external meetings and collaboration.
Set up your workspace carefully.
Make sure there’s nothing in your camera’s view that you wouldn’t want to share with a colleague or customer and try to find a place that’s relatively far from outside noises, dogs, etc.
Make sure you have a headset.
An inexpensive headset can make your meetings more comfortable, but earbuds and your laptop’s built-in mic should be fine. You can skip the headset and just use the speakers and mic on your laptop, but you may have problems with audio feedback
Know your Internet connection.
Is your internet connection strong enough for videoconferencing? Do you have any low data caps? If your internet seems to fail on video meetings or if you're concerned about data limits, you can disable your video at any time in a meeting.
Use the Mute button.
Your microphone is muted automatically if there are 5 or more people in the call, but it’s a good idea to keep yourself muted until it’s time to participate.
Stay in touch with your team!
If you would normally talk about a project face-to-face, then start a meeting and add a colleague or start a video call with someone directly from Chat or Hangouts. See our handy recap for more information
When you’re working from home, or anywhere for that matter, knowing how to use Google Meet gives you ways to stay in touch with colleagues and clients and helps you get business done with distributed teams.
More Google Meet Resources
Ready to learn how to use Google Meet and Google Hangouts for a remote work environment? Check out this training video from Onix’s Meg Rivers Meg expands upon the ideas in this blog and gives you even more inspiration to make remote working easy and effective.
And don’t forget to check out our recap below for links to handy resources that will show you how to start and join video meetings, collaborate in them and manage all of the settings so you can learn how to use Google Meet in a way that works best for you and your organization.
How to Start and Join Video Meetings
Learn the different ways to start a video meeting, such as from a Calendar invite, a web browser, or your phone.
Learn the different ways to join a video meeting, such as from a Calendar invite, meeting link, or conference room.
Learn the different ways to add people to a video meeting, such as from a Calendar invite, Meet, or a phone.
Customize video meetings
Change screen layouts in a meeting
Pin, mute, or remove meeting participants
Use captions in a video meeting
Use a phone for audio in a video meeting
Share resources in a video meeting
View meeting details and attachments
Send chat messages to video meeting participants
Present during a video meeting
Broadcast video meetings to a larger group
Manage Meet settings
Allow notifications from Meet, Chat, and classic Hangouts
Change your camera, speakers, microphone, or video quality
