How to Conduct a Remote Meeting in 2023 +Tips & Tools

While a free version is available, you will need a paid Google Workspace plan for access to whiteboard tools and social media integrations. Video conferencing software has become a lifeline to millions and a standard part of our daily lives. Today’s best video conferencing software and apps allow colleagues to see and hear each other with HD quality. With a wealth of video conferencing options available—all offering unique features at different prices, selecting one can be difficult.

Slack is a communication tool for initiating video calls and chat sessions with other teammates, fostering teamwork. Doing so will allow for an easy follow-up of the suggestions’ implementation. Furthermore, an outline provides referencing material for the shareholders of the meeting to gauge their response to the agenda.

Forbes Advisor breaks down the best video conferencing apps to help you choose the right fit for your team and budget. In each review, we discuss the ease of signing up, creating a meeting, inviting participants, and setting up audio and video controls. They can then send those docs to everyone in the discussion or save them in shared cloud storage. Beyond video calling itself, you’ll likely want a few additional capabilities. You may also want to look for more granular options, such as the ability to share just one document, image, or application , rather than the entire desktop. Another feature many packages support is video annotation and virtual whiteboards, where meeting participants can collaborate.

Available on the web and with mobile apps, it lets you easily organize projects and work on them with colleagues. Video conferencing plus VoIP platforms offer a more enterprise-appropriate solution to remote meetings. These are platforms that allow meeting organizers to schedule calls in advance, send out mass email invitations with unique access links and call-in numbers.

The need for tools and storage platforms to centralize notes and to-dos. On-Demand DemosEmpower your team to build a culture of productive meetings with these on-demand product tutorials. Agenda TemplatesKeep all of your meetings running smoothly with these pre-built meeting agenda templates. Browser ExtensionsAccess meeting notes inside of Google Meet and get helpful details through Google Calendar events.

Virtual Office

It has risen from humble beginnings to become a team collaboration behemoth and a core part of the Microsoft 365 suite. More importantly, unlike some competitors , it’s also a full-featured video conferencing system that’s suitable for far more than one-to-one video calls. ClickMeeting stands out from the rest of the pack by catering to customers who primarily want to conduct webinars and other large-scale presentations. Unlike the other services in our roundup, it can scale to audiences of up to 1,000 participants . It also offers generous online storage for recording meetings, so that people who couldn’t attend a live session can have the option to play it back later.

And when it comes to virtual meetings, finding a reliable and secure video conferencing software can seem like a daunting task — but no fear! We’ve compiled some of the best meeting tools around for team leaders and project managers who are hoping to improve their organization’s meeting productivity. Whether meeting in person or solely in the digital realm, these meeting tools can help any group make the most of their meeting time. Meeting and video conferencing tools increase productivity, save time, lowers travel costs, and foster collaboration in general. Consider using explainer videos for your better online meeting presentation. The beauty of online video meetings is that it allows you to make use of all of these advantages without having to travel for a face-to-face conversation on a regular basis.

How to choose the best conference tool for remote meetings

Finalizing the moderator for the meetings is also vital since the person needs to govern the end-to-end web based meeting and track the time too. You can engage only the key members of different departments, teams, or units in the meetings may be the unit heads or project managers. The participants can propagate the information to others thus preventing unnecessary exhaustion of the entire team.

Since then, it has rapidly grown into one of the more comprehensive and well-respected services on our list, despite a few security hiccups along the way. In addition, it has steadily added features, including integrations with a growing catalog of third-party business software. You need a video conferencing system to accommodate hybrid work, regardless of your company’s size. Our tested, recommended picks help small and large businesses stay connected and productive.

Online Work Sites

Other services simply require that attendees enter a code to access the meeting. At first glance, it can seem challenging to choose which video conferencing service is right for your organization, because most offer the same basic features. But in fact, you’ll want to evaluate several factors before making your decision, and assessing the software’s overall user experience is a good place to start. Most of the video conferencing services in this roundup also offer a text chat mode during meetings and sometimes outside of video calls, too. If webinars are your thing, or you’re looking for a video conferencing solution for online education sessions, you should definitely give ClickMeeting a look. RingCentral is well-respected for its business communication technologies, most notably its voice-over-IP solution.

If you wish, you can import your existing whiteboards from other collaborative apps, e.g., Miro. You can use the feature to talk to your colleagues about projects and work in-depth, without having to type everything into a DM. While this isn’t a replacement for cloud storage services, you are able to drag, drop and share files with your colleagues directly within Slack. It’s also compatible with services such as Google Drive, Dropbox and Box. Office hours are a way to offer your skills and expertise to the rest of the company or to new team members.

Best Team Collaboration Tool

The other way to use Getscreen.me is to simply open the program and share the public link. With this anonymous session, whoever you give the link to will have access to your computer without needing a password. This is perfect for spontaneous technical support, but know that the connection time is limited when the program is used anonymously like this. The DWAgent tool for the host can be installed on several operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and macOS.

• Features like real-time sentiment analysis alerts managers when negative sentiment is detected so they can immediately provide in-call guidance to improve your customer experience.
• Another advantage of using Microsoft Teams for video conferencing is its integration with other Microsoft applications.
• VEED is a user-friendly screen recorder that is perfect for creating high-quality recordings.
• It’s a very feature complete application with a generous free version, which makes it hard to match for the vast majority of users.
• You can start with the free plan, which has limitations on the file sizes and the number of collaborators.

As with most software-as-a-service , video conferencing providers offer multiple pricing tiers. The lowest tier is available at no cost for many of the services we tested. These free offerings are great for connecting with friends and family and occasional business use. However, they are feature-limited, and come with restrictions on how long meetings can be and how many people can attend. Organizations that plan to use video conferencing as an everyday tool should invest in a paid service to take advantage of its additional capabilities.

How to host efficient remote meetings easily

Miro is one of those online tools that aims to bridge the gap between traditional office working and the modern hybrid routine that many of us are familiar with. It is best described as a multipurpose online collaboration tool, and its list of features is pretty extensive stretching beyond the typical realms of similar software. Cross-team collaborative meetings are for two or more teams to sync on projects or mutual goals. These meetings should have prepared talking points and agendas sent to the team ahead of time and should allow plenty of time for questions from each team.

Efficient online meeting management

With a simple interface and intuitive controls, Teams makes it easy for participants to join a video call, share their screen, and collaborate in real-time. Participants can record and share their screens, present slides, chat, and collaborate in real time. Developed by Google, this video conferencing tool is accessible through a web browser or a mobile app. It’s a good Zoom alternative that I use often to communicate with my team.

Best Video Conferencing Software Of 2023

It also helps the implementor access its viability and effectiveness in relaying what the facilitator intends to share. Virtual whiteboards are online platforms that allow you to create and edit visual content with your team in real time. You can use them to draw diagrams, write notes, add images, and more. They are great for brainstorming, mapping, planning, and presenting your ideas. The software automatically distributes incoming tickets to departments and agents, making it the perfect workflow automation tool.

The tool helps manage the customer’s experience by providing a simple way to book an appointment and to receive reminders, as well as other related information. Everytale aims to nurture an inclusive community of people with niche interests. Within these communities, people can organize and manage events within their circle, or they can host larger events to help spread the word. And with the capability of streaming 4K videos, Everytale lets users enjoy content from anywhere in the world. To take these events a step further, organizers using Everytale have the option of using “interaction tools” to roll out surveys and polls during events, or even after they are finished.

We all know that if you want a meeting to be productive, you need to have a meeting agenda, which is why Fellow works well in conjunction with other online meeting tools. Fellow fosters a very collaborative virtual work environment and champions personal accountability by keeping your team organized with clear meeting action items and next steps. Meeting management tools have become especially popular since the start of COVID-19, seeing as many of us moved our workdays completely online. Where many companies began using online meeting tools simply for video conferences or video calls, these tools have many more functions that are worth exploring. If you and your team are looking to leverage your next online meeting, this blog post is for you. It’s estimated that 37% of the time spent in meetings is unproductive, adding nothing of value to the organization or it’s operation.

To test for the best online collaboration tools we searched for a range of popular options as well as took recommendations from people we know who use online collaboration tools regularly. We then tried each platform to see how user-friendly each was, as well as determine what range of tools and advanced options were available. When deciding which online collaboration tool to use, first how to run a successful remote meeting consider what actual needs you have. Features include chat, messageboards, to-do lists and scheduling as well as automated check-in, as well as a single place to store all documents, files, and folders. Unlike other collaborative software that charges per user, Basecamp charges a single fee of $99.99 for unlimited users, which could make it especially attractive to larger organizations.