As the college prepares for the September 1st transition from Zoom to Google Meet, it’s helpful to familiarize yourself with Google Meet settings, navigation, and optimization. Below are some starter tips for using Google Meet.
For even more tips, check out our Knowledge Base articles and videos.
1. Improved Performance in the Meet App
Google Meet is available through your browser or as a web application. The Meet app is similar to the familiar Zoom interface, and it floats as a separate window on your screen, rather than in a browser tab. Using the app improves performance by using dedicated memory and not competing with other Chrome tabs. We recommend that you download and install the Meet web application, which will provide you with a faster, smoother connection.
2. How to Schedule a Meet
You can schedule a Google Meet through the Meet app, in a Google Calendar event, or from the left hand navigation in Gmail. If you use the app, you can choose to start an instant meeting and then invite participants to join you, or you can schedule a meeting at a future date.
The easiest way to create a Meet is by selecting “Add Google Meet video conferencing” in a Calendar event. This can be done at any time from when the event is created until it occurs.
3. Privacy Settings and Features
Worried about who can join your meeting? Meets have three levels of security:
- Open means absolutely anyone, as long as they have the meeting link or code, can click and join.
- Trusted means anyone signed in with a Carleton email address or who you’ve invited via your Google Calendar invite, can click and join. Any others who have the link will have to ask to join and then be admitted by the host.
- Restricted means only people explicitly invited by the host through the Google Calendar can join. All others who have the link will first have to ask to join and then be admitted by the host.
Open is Carleton’s default privacy setting, which allows anyone to join your Meet if they have the meeting link or code. You can adjust your privacy settings when you create the meeting or during the meeting.
You can also use waiting rooms to manage who can and cannot join your meeting. Adding a waiting room to your Meet lets you view and admit (or not admit) anyone who wants to join your Meet. You can also message participants who are in the waiting room or admit everyone all at once.
4. Improving Meet Functionality
Like any video conferencing tool, the network connection and your settings can impact performance for you and your participants. In addition to checking your network connection and keeping applications up to date, there are a number of adjustments you can make to your audio and visual settings to improve your experience with Meet.
One of the most common issues people experience is with background noise. To turn on noise cancellation, select the “V” pull-down next to the microphone, select the cog icon, and toggle on Noise cancellation and Push to talk.
For additional tips, watch our video explaining advanced audio and visual settings in Meet.
5. Viewing and Sharing Meet Records and “Artifacts”
Google Meet can create recordings, transcripts, reports, and other “artifacts” from your meeting. After a meeting, these items appear in different places. If you are the owner, recordings and reports are created in your Google Drive under “Meet Recordings” and “Meet Reports.” You will also receive emails notifying you that these files have been created. If you were a guest in the meeting, you can access recordings and reports from the Calendar Invitation. (It may take a few minutes for these documents to appear.)
The automatic sharing of Google Meet Recordings is limited to Carleton folks who were invited directly in the Google Calendar. These files will also be available to Carleton folks in their Shared with Me section of Google Drive.
Attendees who do not have a Carleton account or were invited via a Google Group will not have access to the records automatically. They can click on the file in Google Calendar and request access to view it.
If you have questions about using Google Meet, please reach out to Dann Hurlbert (x4870).