Remote teams who don’t communicate face to face need meetings. However, without the right tools and guidelines to organize them, they can become a time-consuming nightmare.
TeamGantt believes that time is precious and valuable. We schedule a company meeting once per month to check in and update on progress. It’s a great way to meet with colleagues.
Let’s take a look to see some of the most innovative video conferencing tools you can use for arranging and executing productive meetings with your team.
Google Hangouts
We use Google Hangouts to organize our Monday meetings. It is simple and accessible to everyone.
Google Hangouts creates an unique link that takes to the same conference window. This saves you the hassle of creating separate windows for each meeting. The call quality is excellent and it is easy to share files and messages between conversations. You can also invite non-Google users into your Hangout so that everyone is included in the conversation.
Price
join.me
Join.me’s ease of setting up conference calls with anyone is one of my favorite features. Aaron, my mentor, used the app during my first two weeks in customer support training.
You can host your entire group or one-on-one meetings by linking to your conference call via a personal link. Join.me offers more than voice and video calls. You can share your screen with join.me to facilitate discussions, swap presenter roles and relay your ideas using the new whiteboard feature. It is intuitive and powerful enough to be used for meetings and conference calls.
Premium plans include additional feeds and features for a free price
Room
No downloads. No registration. Room allows you to create video meetings and screen sharing from your browser.
It works in the same way as join.me, except that you need to share the URL of your video meeting to get it started. You can save rooms to prevent you from creating new rooms for meetings. Room also has Android and iOS apps that allow you to start and attend meetings from wherever you are.
Room has a limitation. You can only have up to three people in a single room. It is best for small groups that hold one-on-one meetings.
Price
MeetSpace
MeetSpace is a new video conferencing app that allows remote teams to communicate primarily via video conferencing.
Instead of having a personal link or calendar, the app prompts users to click on the meeting room to join the conversation. It also features interruption control, where pressing the Space bar will mutes your microphone, giving everyone in the room the chance to speak.
It is currently in beta mode so anyone can try it out for free.
Beta: No cost
Skype
Skype is still the best. This VoIP tool allows individuals and teams to make calls and send instant messages with anyone around the globe. It has been around as long as anyone can recall.
Each conversation has its own chat window, where you can screen-share and attach files and links. You can also cap your messages using emojis or gifs. You can have up 25 people in a group call and send invites to your meeting members.
Skype for Business: Price: $2/user/month or free
Slack
Slack is a popular choice for remote teams due to its ease of communication. The beta version of Slack’s call feature allows everyone to use the call button to schedule a one-on-1 or group call with other members of a channel.
Slack doesn’t yet support video calls, but the company makes up the difference by integrating with other screen-sharing apps so meetings can be organized and efficient. With the recent acquisition of Screenhero screen-sharing app, paying users can expect video conference built into Slack.
