Google Meet hybrid meeting best practices for admins
As an IT administrator, you control the default settings for Google Meet meetings in your organization. Hybrid meetings are meetings where some people are in a room together and others join remotely from a computer or phone. This article highlights best practices for making hybrid meetings easier to manage and more accessible to everyone in your organization.
Make sure Meet has enough bandwidth
Set up your network so you have enough bandwidth for everyone to be seen and heard. Best practice is to give Meet the shortest possible path to the internet.
Learn how to Prepare your network for Meet meetings
Make Meet your default for video calling
If you use Meet as your default for video calling, a Meet link is automatically set up for your users when they create meetings in Google Calendar.
Learn how to Control conferencing for Calendar events (for admins)
Set up mic and camera policy defaults
Set defaults for your users so they don't have to deal with complicated setup. Learn more about Chrome policies and get the URLs that are granted access to audio and video capture devices without prompt:
Set up meeting rooms and room hardware
It's best practice to set up meeting rooms and hardware for your users so that the zoom in, room check in, and room assignment features are meaningful and effective for your users. For more details, go to:
Use adaptive audio
If your organization doesn’t have enough conferencing hardware, everyone can still meet in the same room on their own laptops and have a seamless audio experience. With adaptive audio, Meet automatically detects and synchronizes multiple microphones and speakers.
Learn how to use adaptive audio in Meet
Create meeting backgrounds for your users
Create a background using your company logo for consistent branding and share it with your users. You can also encourage users to create unique backgrounds in Meet using AI.
Learn how to Let users apply backgrounds & special effects
Prepare for large hybrid meetings
If your hybrid meetings have hundreds or even thousands of attendees, best practice is to live-stream them. The vast majority of attendees will be non-participating viewers. You can give the Meet link to people you'd like to participate in the meeting, and the live stream link to everyone else.
Choose streaming defaults
Set up live streaming defaults, like whether you want Meet to stream to YouTube.
Learn how to Turn live streaming on or off for Meet
Assign roles like viewer, participant, and co-host
You can make some meeting attendees viewers and others participants. Viewers can watch a meeting but not interact with it. Best practice is that every meeting should have at least one host in attendance to let people in or kick people out. For more info, go to:
Give hosts greater control over their meetings
Empower hosts with Host management. When it's turned on, the meeting host can click Host controls in the meeting to control:
- Who can present and send chat messages
- Audio and video
- Ending the meeting for everyone
- (For some Google Workspace editions) Adding co-hosts and co-moderators.
Let meeting organizers get attendance and live stream reports
Help your users get the facts and stats about their meetings.
Learn how to Let organizers get reports on meeting attendance & live stream views
Let people create and respond to polls
Let your users conduct polls in meetings.
Learn how to Conduct polls in Google Meet
Enable accessibility
Meet has built-in accessibility features that are useful in a wide range of situations. The features listed below are best practices.
Learn more about Google Meet accessibility features
Record meetings
Encourage people to record their meetings for those who can't be there. Remind them that meetings aren't recorded automatically; somebody always has to start the recording during the meeting. Also, remind users that if they want to save meeting recordings for longer than 3 months, they have to re-save the file to a new place in their Google Drive.
Learn how to Turn Meet recording on or off for your organization
Transcribe meetings
Encourage your users to create meeting transcripts so they have written records of everything that happened during a meeting. Transcripts are great for when you want to record a meeting but don't have Drive space to spare, or when it's important to quote someone exactly.
Learn how to Turn meeting transcription on or off
Avoid audio feedback and see user names in meeting rooms
Avoid audio feedback during in-room presentations by using Companion mode. When users in meeting rooms check into rooms with Companion mode, they are identified by name in captions and transcriptions or when they raise their hand. They can also present the screen they're using Companion mode with. The companion device is muted to minimize audio feedback.
Use captions & translated captions
Keep everyone on the same page with automated captions in multiple languages. Captions pop up in real time.
Learn how to Use captions & translated captions in Google Meet
Encourage users to pair with their interpreters
Allow users to pair with their interpreter so everyone in the meeting sees their video tiles next to each other. This is also best practice for when multiple people are making a presentation together.
Learn how to Pair tiles in Google Meet