We’re very excited to announce that the new web-experience for all our users is now live. So, without further ado, we’re incredibly proud to introduce you to a sleeker, leaner, and more intuitive web interface for your video meetings:
We’ve transformed the UI
The first major difference you can see are the changes to the UI (user interface). But this isn’t just a lick of paint or a superficial facelift, oh no; the design has been developed to streamline navigation through the app, making your overall video and meeting experience smoother and simpler, whichever device you’re using:
- If you click on the # option in the top-right menu, this brings up the list of the Virtual Meeting Rooms (VMRs) that you own or can manage. You can also search for others rooms in your company that you do not own or manage.
- You will notice in this list we’ve renamed VMRs to simply rooms. Don’t worry, they’re still the same super flexible virtual meeting rooms as before, we’ve just shortened the name to keep things simple
- Remember to select the room you wish to join from the rooms list before you get started
- Click on the # button to hide the room list again
We’ve simplified how to join meetings and invite other people
It’s now super easy to both join the meeting room of your choice and invite other users to join your meeting:
To invite people to your meeting:
It’s easy for anyone to join your meeting in seconds. Previously, you had an option of sending an email through your native email client to people you wished to invite with a link for them to follow.
Now, you’ll now see the shareable url link for your room displayed immediately below the Welcome message.
Click on copy and you can now paste and share the link however you want, via email, or other messaging services, to allow any user to join in just a few short clicks.
- Underneath the shareable link you will also find the advanced room info
- Clicking on this will display all the complete room details for the alternative ways people can access your meeting room
- Again, this text is instantly shareable by hitting copy text, so you can paste and share the information with people in the way you prefer. The information show covers:
- web browser link
- Skype4Business
- videoconferencing systems link
- telephone (audio only; with dialling number & conference code)
To join a meeting:
The fastest way is to simply choose the Join room in browser button (option A), which lets you join the room straight through the browser.
Otherwise, you can select option ‘B’, to join with another device or app, guiding you through connecting via:
(i) A PC or Mac software client
(ii) a video hardware system / video endpoint
(iii) telephone (for audio only).
When joining through the browser, you’ll find some new settings to help give you more control over how you join a meeting room:
- You can now mute the camera or the microphone before joining a meeting room - just click on the icons to turn them blue before you enter the room. By using these buttons you can still re-enable the camera or microphone anytime through the call.
- If you want to reduce your data usage, you can also check Join with Audio + Presentation only mode. This disables incoming and outgoing video throughout the call, and only allows incoming or outgoing screen shares + audio. In this mode you will need to exit and re-enter the call to re-enable your camera or to receive video again.
- Audio and presentation only mode means you won’t be on video, but you can still see or share any content displayed via screen sharing by or with other participants, as well as receive their audio feeds. Perfect for when you’re out in the field, or stuck in airports or hotels, but still need to stay in the loop back home
- If this is your first time logging into the updated service, it’s probably worth going into the Settings tab to check the defaults for the camera, microphone, and speakers, to make sure the correct sources are chosen
- You can also choose the picture quality- the default is ‘medium’ — this works by altering the bandwidth you would like to use to give you the best possible experience for your current connection conditions
- You can also check to ensure that screen sharing has been enabled within your chosen browser
Managing a meeting
We’ve now optimized managing a meeting from touch screens so that it’s easy to manage a meeting from any device. You’ll also notice you can view the same info about the meeting and it’s participants inside the call as you can outside of the call
- Clicking on the people icon next to the # button will display your participant list
- You can scroll through the participants list easily using your cursor or touch screen
- You can manage individual participants in the call — by muting their microphone, or clicking the X next their name to disconnect them
- Selecting Disconnect All at the top of the list will end the call for everyone currently participating and disconnect everyone
- It’s now even easier to hide or show the view of your own camera feed during the call while your camera is on
- You can now mute your camera during a meeting as well as before- click on the camera icon at the bottom-centre position of the screen so that it so that it turns blue
- You can now invite someone to a room by calling them from the room itself. Not only can you now dial out to your company contacts, video addresses or remote IP addresses, even better — you can dial out to multiple addresses at the same time!
- Start by clicking on the “Invite someone” button, then “Dial colleague or video address”
- Click names to remove them before dialling
- If you’re using an endpoint video system to host your meeting, you can now use your mobile device to manage the meeting via the responsive website
