Setting Up and Managing Group Networking
PheedLoop Meet, as you may already know, is a crucial and proprietary part of the PheedLoop virtual event platform allowing for video/audio/text meetings throughout the whole virtual event experience. One of its most powerful use-cases is allowing more than two attendees to communicate at once, very similar to a Zoom meeting for example. This is where group networking comes in. In this article, we discuss functionality, moderation, tips, and frequently asked questions.
Creating Groups
Group networking requires your account to have the Networking module purchased and added. If you have the Networking module purchased, then you have access to 5x5 group networking. This means you can have up to 5 active groups with 5 active participants in each group at any given time. The Group Networking Upgrade allows you to increase this to 25x25, which means you can have up to 25 active groups with 25 active participants in each group at any given time.
Creating groups is done entirely in the virtual event portal itself, and you have two options. You can either restrict group creation only to yourself as the event admin if you want to have more control and carefully curate the groups available for attendees, or you can allow any attendee to create groups in your event. To toggle this setting, visit General > Virtual in your dashboard, and toggle the setting called Prevent Public Group Creation.
To create a group, log into the virtual event portal (login with your admin credentials if you have restricted group creation), and visit the Networking tab. If you do not see the Networking tab, ensure you have enabled the Networking Section toggle under General > Virtual. In the Networking section of the virtual event portal, you will find a tab called Groups. Click into that, and click "Create Group". Fill in the group's topic and description, and submit it. The group will instantly pop-up in the list of groups in real-time on everyone's screens if they are looking at the Groups tab in the Networking section.
Deleting Groups
Only event administrators can delete groups. To do so, please log into the virtual event portal with your admin credentials, and in the Groups tab under Networking, click on the "x" circular button floating on the right-hand side of any group in the list. The group will be deleted in real-time for all your attendees, but will not affect anyone currently in the group in a video call.
Meeting Functionality in Groups
There are three key mechanisms in a group to communicate with, built-in to the way PheedLoop Meet works in general. Text chat, video chat, and audio chat. Text chat is conducted via the familiar context-aware chat and presence monitoring system on the right-hand side of any group once it is entered. The text messages are permanent, which means anyone who joins the group can scroll through the discussion history. To partake in the video or audio chat, once inside the group, simply clicking on "Join Video Call" will pull up the familiar PheedLoop Meet interface, and allow attendees to join in a live meeting experience (allows for screen sharing also).
Gallery View for Video Meetings
PheedLoop Meet optimizes the tiles and views of participants inside the video meeting interface depending on screen size and other factors. In general, the video meeting interface shows all participants in a gallery view, showing up to 16 tiles (video feeds) at one time. There can still be up to 25 participants in a group, but the first 16 to turn their video feeds on will show up until one of them stops sharing their video. Everyone can participate over audio as well, no limits there. If a screen is shared, then the video tiles wrap around the screen being shared, so that the screen share gets the maximum amount of exposure.
Tracking Live Attendance in Groups
PheedLoop's live attendance tracker updates approximately every 60 seconds to check if an attendee is in idle mode. In the list of groups under the Groups sub-tab in the Networking section, you'll see a cool gallery of display pictures for attendees currently live in the group they are appearing on (limit of 10 attendees show up here, more may be in the group itself). In the group itself, you can track who is present in the group in more detail via the presence tracker tab on the right-hand side next to the chat area. Finally, in the video meeting interface itself, you can click on the "people" icon at the top left to see who is there, and whether they have their audio and/or video enabled.