Meeting events are a great way to provide an interactive video call meeting as a stand-alone event. Within the meeting room, all the attendees can be on camera and audio, and meet ‘face-to-face'. Assigned hosts have the elevated ability to record the meeting and segment attendees by assigning break-out rooms during the call.
Currently, the capacity for meeting rooms is 125 active attendees in the call.
With mobile meeting room attendees, we have seen degraded performance if more than 50 concurrent users are on the call.
If you need to host a similar type of event for more attendees, we suggest hosting a webinar event for up to 350 attendees.
There are two ways to build Meeting rooms, either as a stand-alone event or within an event, as a type of session.
If your event is one virtual group discussion without the need for livestream or 1:1 matching, you can create it as a ‘Meeting’ event and it will be a stand-alone meeting room attendees can register for.
You can also create a meeting room as a type of agenda item or session, within a larger event that users access from the agenda. To learn more about this type of meeting room, visit this doc.
💡 Pro Tip: To best utilize a meeting room, assign a host, or hosts to lead the discussion, record the session and have the ability to assign attendees to breakout rooms.
Creating a standalone Meeting event
From the Gradual dashboard, select Events on the left-hand side menu. Select +Create an event in the upper right-hand side of that page.
Enter Type as “Meeting” and give your meeting room a title, select the proper timezone, enter the scheduled start date and time, and the scheduled end date and time. Select ‘Submit’ at the base.
You will be directed to the ‘Meeting Room Settings’ page where you must assign a meeting host (or multiple hosts) and the number of seats available in the room (currently supports up to 125 people).
To add a host, select + Select Meeting Host. Hosts must be attendees or registrants of the event, so you can search for and select already registered attendees in this pop-up, or at the base of the page select + New Attendee As Host to register and add someone from your community as the host. Enter the number of seats you’d like available in this meeting and click ‘Save’.
If you want to add more or change hosts at a later date, you can access this feature within the event, in Meeting Room on the left-hand side menu.
Complete your event setup by selecting Event SetUp on the left-hand side, and making sure all relevant details are listed in the General Info tab.
You can upload an image, provide a description, and also assign tags to the event.
Once that’s complete, you’re set to publish this event and start promoting it! Click the ‘Publish’ button at the base of the left-hand side menu when ready, and find the event link to share and promote the event in ‘Overview’.
Video Guide
Meeting settings and features
Ticket types and invitations
You can customize the type of tickets offered, the number of tickets or seats to the event, and the cost of tickets in the Ticket Types menu.
If you need to restrict access to certain ticket types or events, you can utilize Invitations and parameters during registration.
Learn more about invite-only events and ticketing here.
Note: You will set the quota or number of seats for the meeting room in the Ticket Setup > Ticket Types menu now, as opposed to the Meeting Room tab.
Important: The maximum capacity of meeting events and video calls is 125 concurrent participants. You can issue a total of 350 tickets, however, only 125 will be able to join the call at any time.
Registration Form
Build custom registration forms by asking attendees to answer a series of questions before they confirm their attendance. Forms can be unique to different ticket types as well!
Agenda & Speakers
Promote the schedule of your meeting event by creating a detailed agenda and adding speaker profiles to the event.
Emails
Gradual can send out event confirmation and reminder emails automatically to your registrants. See examples of these emails and how to enable or disable them here.
Q&A
Provide a Q&A module during your meeting event (or meeting held within your live stream event) to engage your audience and ensure they are learning from your presenters and walking away with valuable insight.
Learn more about the Q&A module here.
Recording
Opt to auto-record the meeting event from the event dashboard so the call is recorded when hosts join. Or, host(s) can hit Record live in the event to capture important portions of the event to publish as replays. All recordings can be downloaded after the event in the Recordings tab.
Lobby (Waiting Room)
From the dashboard, you can enable an lobby or waiting room so all attendees (including panelists) must be approved by host(s) to join the call.
Learn more about this feature, how to turn it on, and manage it as a host here.
Sound Notification
From the dashboard, you can enable an optional sound notification to ring for all attendees when someone joins the meeting room. This bell-like sound will go off when anyone joins the room, no matter their role, and can only be enabled or disabled in the dashboard by an admin or event collaborator from the Meeting Room Settings page.
This setting is defaulted to 'off' for all meetings and roundtables.
Admit Attendees Early
By default, the 'doors' will open to the meeting room at the time set in General Info. If you'd like to admit attendees earlier than that start time, you can set the specified time in the General Info page in Advanced Settings.
💡 Pro Tip: Admit attendees a few minutes before the event is set to start so they can log in, get their microphone and camera settings in order, and you have time to greet and welcome attendees to the call.
3rd Party Call Platform
If you'll be hosting the meeting in another platform like Zoom or Google Meet, follow the steps here to set that up.
Other Meeting Resources
Before the event: Prepare for your meeting event by following this checklist of items that include testing the environment with your speakers and setting up notifications and alerts.
During the event: Follow this orientation script to help members get acquainted with the platform. and get the most out of the meeting.
After the event: Once the event is over, there are a number of steps to take to continue engagement with members. Here is a checklist of features and actions to take within Gradual to successfully close out an event.