4 Essentials for Building the Ultimate G Suite-Powered Meeting Room

Approximately 15% of UK businesses have already adopted a G Suite based solution, but even those currently using G Suite may not be fully aware of the advantages it has to offer. G Suite’s hardware and software meeting solutions have yet to be realized by many businesses.

Here are four things to know about G Suite’s meeting solutions.

Imagine this scenario: you arrive at a meeting and the meeting code doesn’t work. The team scrambles and eventually gets everything up and running. However, the meeting has now started late and the agenda needs to be rushed. With Hangouts Meet, you will never encounter this problem.

When scheduling a meeting in Google Calendar, selecting the Hangouts Meet option in the meeting details automatically adds the meeting code into the invite. Participants can simply click the meeting code to join the meeting. It’s that simple.

Hangouts Meet is the enterprise version of Hangouts, which has better video quality and allows for more participants. It supports high-definition video with up to 50 participants and participants can join a meeting by clicking on the meeting code or by using a local dial-in number.

[Hangouts Meet allows users to easily manage meetings with the same efficiency and ease-of-use]

Video conferencing solutions are usually expensive and overly complicated pieces of proprietary hardware that have varying degrees of call quality. Finding a suitable video conferencing solution can be a time consuming and cumbersome process. Hangouts Meet Hardware is a system designed by Google that is specifically designed to optimally run Hangouts Meet. It is a cost-effective way to bring high-quality video meetings to your business without requiring heavy IT support. The set consists of a touchscreen controller, speaker, mic, ASUS Chromebox, and 4K sensor camera.

Powered by Chrome OS, the ASUS Chromebox is the heart of the solution, automatically pushing updates to the other components in the hardware kit. With Hangout Meets Hardware, there is no need to worry about updates or security patches.

The touchscreen controller allows you to select and initiate scheduled meetings from Google Calendar with the tap of a finger. You can pin and mute team members as well as control the pan, tilt, and zoom of the camera. The camera uses machine learning to intelligently crop and zoom, perfectly framing everyone in small meeting rooms for more personal, productive meetings.

G Suite enterprise has a recording feature that can save and share the entire meeting using Google Drive.

[With Hangout Meets Hardware, there is no complicated setup or system maintenance.]

[Technical tip: when using a mic, the most important thing is coverage. The speaker/mic unit that comes with HMH can be daisy-chained to cover more spacious meeting spaces. Since every meeting room is unique, try different configurations until you determine the best arrangement for your needs.]

Google meeting spaces have a distinct look-and-feel to them. They are vibrant, spacious, and orderly. The tables have built-in compartments for cables and easily accessible power sockets. If you’ve ever been in a Google meeting room, you’d know that the seats are also comfortable.

Ergonomic furniture is a worthwhile investment because your employees will feel more comfortable and valued.

[Investing in ergonomic furniture is a worthwhile investment because your employees will feel more energize and valued.]

[Technical tip: According to Google, features such as height and armrest adjustments on a chair improve meeting participants’ comfort. There should be at least 1200 mm of space between fixed furniture for ideal accessibility.]

Most companies using G Suite have experienced an increase in efficiency and productivity. With that said, many companies are still using traditional whiteboards in their meeting rooms. The results of the meetings stay with the whiteboard. If the meeting needs to continue at another time, someone needs to recreate the contents of the previous meeting.

Adding a Jamboard to a meeting room offers teams a comprehensive solution to automatically store and easily access their work in the cloud. Jamboard is integrated with G Suite, which means that users can easily access their digital assets on Google Drive in a jam. Jamboard also has an app that allows users to collaborate by accessing jams on their mobile devices.

Hangouts Meet is built into the Jamboard so that users can easily present jams into Meet. In fact, a Hangouts Meet Hardware can be paired with a Jamboard so that whenever a meeting starts on the HMH, the Jamboard will be automatically prompted to present to the meeting without needing to enter in a meeting code. Participants in the video conference can see in real-time all the images, documents, and drawings on the Jamboard. This is especially effective when participants are from different regions and there is a language barrier.

[Having a Jamboard in the meeting room increases productivity and facilitates collaboration beyond the meeting room through its unique cloud-sharing functionality.]