Setting Up Online Meetings

Online meetings have not only phased out face to face meetings, they have also made holding of business meetings much simpler. Now, people needn’t make hefty travel expenses so as to attend any crucial meeting, as they can proactively take part in decision-making with the help of web-conferencing tools. Although online meetings can be set-up easily, some preparatory work must be done to ensure success of these meetings.

Tips To Schedule Online Meetings

Proper planning plays a vital role in enhancing the benefits of online meetings. Some of the necessary things that must be kept in mind are:

• * Select Proper Date And Time – Like conventional meetings, choose the suitable date and time for the conferencing. This marks beginning of the process of online meeting. While a majority of control panels display local date and time by default, one can change these as per the requirement. In addition to this, meeting organizer should also estimate the duration for which web conferencing would last.

Along the same lines, it is useful to set email reminders, along with a meeting reminder time, say fifteen minutes. Every attendee would receive a reminder mail for the meeting fifteen minutes before the scheduled time for the meeting. Furthermore, if the meeting recurs after a certain period, organizers can also set up default timer for the meeting.

• * Types Of Invites – A majority of web conferencing tools have their own characteristic ways of sending invites to the attendees of the meeting. Some of these applications even offer the flexibility to decide upon the type of invites simply by clicking on to “schedule a meeting” tab.

Almost all the prominent web conferencing tools provide toolbar integration into various applications, including MS Office, Internet Explorer, and Excel. However, one can also use the Instant Messenger applications for sending invitations to the attendees. This could even serve as a speedier method for sending the invites.

• * Selecting Options – Not all online meetings are same, while some of these are interactive in nature, others include unidirectional communication. There are some options that one would like to consider while setting up online meeting. These include text messaging to enable attendees to communicate during the meeting. Attendees can communicate with the organizer or with each other using text messaging chat.

In addition to this, the option of vide further enables the attendee to proactively take part in the meeting. Notes feature can further be used to allow attendees or the organizer to keep record of the meeting. These notes can also be printed out after the meeting gets over. File transfer is also one of the most sought after feature that the attendees often look for.

• * Privileges – Once the required options are chosen, it’s recommended to set privileges for the attendees of the meeting. While some of the attendees would be allowed to save shared documents on the meetings, others would perhaps be allowed to keep printed version of the documents only. Attendees can even have the capability to access attendee list, as well as control desktop, or applications remotely.