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College of Heralds

The Matins Herald -- Google Meet Instructions

How to Create a Conference in Google Meet Software

As written by Hirsch von Henford, May, 2020

Google Meet is a free conferencing software package that handles multiple users, video, audio and the ability to present information. It is also a part of the West Kingdom's G Suite set of applications, which means that we can use it for free for SCA usage. The purpose of this little article is to get you started using Google Meet specifically, but for it all to work I will touch on the Google Calendar as well (without getting into all features of that). It should be noted that parts of the Google G Suite set of applications are designed with professional/business purposes behind them, and may seem a bit complicated. You can ignore some of the functionality that isn't required to use the software.

An individual creating a Meeting using Google Meet must have a westkingdom.org email account (other people attending the meeting are not required to have a westkingdom.org email address). You can create one by going to this page, West Kingdom 'Services' Page, find the heading: West Kingdom GSuite (westkingdom.org emails/logins), and the link Request an account -- click that and follow the instructions.

There are three main parts to this page:
Creating a Meeting "On the Fly"
Schedule a Meeting with Google Calendar
Running the Meeting

Creating a Meeting "On the Fly"

First, it should be noted that for a regular meeting, such as the Kingdom College of Heralds meetings, it might be a good idea to schedule a meeting on the calendar. We will get to that. A "meeting on the fly" is really just throwing a meeting together because you need to get some folk together to discuss something, chat, share information, and so on. For this to work with the Kingdom's G Suite, the individual creating a meeting must have a Kingdom email address -- this will end with @westkingdom.org.

Step 1: Start your browser and navigate to Google.com: www.google.com.

Step 2: Log in to Google G Suite using your Kingdom (@westkingdom.org) email address.

Google will ask for your email address first, and when you get that in, it will ask for your password. If you have a problem remembering either of those, you may need to work with the Kingdom IT Team.

Note: If you are logged in under a different email address than your westkingdom.org address, you should log out, by clicking the far right icon that will have either an image or a letter in a circle, and choose the "Signout" option (may say "Signout of all accounts").

Step 3: Select Google Meet.
In the upper right you will see a small square made up of 9 smaller squares, click that:

Select Google G Suite Options
Then find the Google Meet icon:

Find Google Meet and click it

Step 4: Start a Meeting.

Click "Join or start a meeting"
(Note, the background changes on this screen regularly, ignore it)

You can enter a title for the meeting (optional).
Note that you cannot use quotes (single ' or double ").

Once you have a name, click "Continue".

Step 5: Allow Camera and/or Microphone (or not)
Note that there may be up to three screens. Click "Allow" or "Block" for each. Note that for camera and/or microphone you can turn these on or off during the meeting, we'll discuss.

Allow Camera and/or Microphone
(first meeting only, next meeting you shouldn't need this
unless you use a different computer or device)

Step 6: Join the Meeting.
Even if you're the one starting the meeting, you have to "Join" it.

Click "Join now" to join the meeting

Running the Meeting
See Running the Meeting below, rather than duplicate information.

Schedule a Meeting with Google Calendar

If you are planning a meeting in advance, it may be a good idea to set up a meeting on the calendar. The Google Calendar options are shown below to help with this. The advantage includes being able to add invitees as needed before the meeting starts.

Step 1: Start your browser and navigate to Google.com: www.google.com.

Step 2: Log in to Google G Suite using your Kingdom (@westkingdom.org) email address.

Step 3: Select Google Calendar.
In the upper right you will see a small square made up of 9 smaller squares, click that:

Select Google G Suite Options
Then find the Google Calendar icon:

Find Google Calendar and click it
(You may get a dialog about getting the
app for your phone ... unless you wish to
download that app to your phone, click "Got It")
Note: The calendar is pretty versatile, and will show a wide range of options, depending on what you may have already done. Some of the screen captures here may have some areas blanked out to avoid any concerns about privacy and such.

The Parts of the Screen
The Top Bar
As you might imagine, there's a lot here, and to make it easier to work with I am going to break the screen down into parts, top, left, main calendar, right ...

Calendar Top "Bar"
The top bar shows some information, allows some navigation, and other options (the numbers in the list below reference the red circles with white numbers in the image ...):

Main Menu -- This option collapses the left sidebar or reopens it. If you hold the mouse over it, the "help" text is "Main Menu".
Today -- The "Today" button will navigate you back to today's view. This is particularly useful if you have been navigating through the menu.
Navigate -- The arrow buttons (left and right) navigate the view. The default is a week view, and so navigating left will go "back" a week, navigating "right" will go forward a week. If you change the view to something else, navigation would follow the appropriate view (month, etc.).
Search -- This button allows you to find specific text on the calendar, and will attempt to show you information that matches what you type.
Help -- This will bring up Google's Help for working with the calendar.
Configure -- this will bring up a menu like this:

Configure Menu
- Settings -- This option takes you into a fairly complex screen allowing you to define colors for how things display and more. be careful ...
- Trash -- will delete a selected item on the calendar.
- Density and Colors -- deals with calendar colors and such as well as how the calendar reacts to the mouse, and more. (This goes way beyond the purpose of this brief tutorial.)
- Print -- will attempt to print the calendar to a printer you have available.
- Get Add-Ons -- will allow you to add features to the calendar that are not already there.
View -- allows you to change the view from the default of "Week", to "Day", "Week", "Month", "Year", "Schedule", "4 days", and you can turn off "Weekends" or choose to not display "Declined events" (events you were invited to but declined).
Google Apps Menu -- shows you what apps you have available, allowing you to switch ...

The Left Sidebar
The left sidebar shows calendars and various options. If you are a peer and have been using the classrooms for discussions (these are limited to peers only, you must be invited to them) these will be listed under "Other calendars" on the left bottom.

Calendar Left Sidebar

Create -- The "Create" button creates an event, clicking it will get you this screen:

Calendar Create Event Dialog
This will be discussed later under "Create an Event".
Current Month, Navigate -- using the arrows you can navigate back and forth ...
Meet with... -- if you click the "Search for people" entry area, you can type in the names of people and select them from a list to find them. This should default to those with westkingdom.org email addresses. You can add multiple people here, although for an event or a Meeting (which is the discussion here) you may want to wait until we "Create Event".
My calendars -- lists a series of calendars. You can select a calendar (on the right if you move your mouse there is an "Options" button) to change the color as well as other options. If you move your mouse over the checkmark on the left you can turn off the display.
Other Calendars will list things like "Holidays in United States", which means that those holidays will appear. If you have other calendars that may have events (like the previously mentioned "Peerage Discussion Lists") those events will default to showing on your calendar. You can uncheck any of these and they won't display. If the Heralds were to create, for example, a calendar that showed upcoming meetings and items of import, you could display this here by using the "+" button and finding it, selecting it.

The Main Screen (Calendar)
In the middle you will see the main calendar and any or all events that may be on it. This one is blank, showing just a redline at about the time on the day the screen captures were taken, which would allow adding an event there by clicking it.

Calendar Main Calendar Area
The Right Sidebar
On the right is a small sidebar ...

Calendar Right Sidebar

Keep -- this allows you to add notes using "Google Keep" (the app for G Suite).
Tasks -- allows you to set up task reminders which by default will appear on the calendar. This is another Google G Suite app, which we won't get into here.
+ -- The + button allows you to add other Google G Suite Apps to this sidebar if you wish.
Not shown in the image, but at the bottom right is a small right-arrow, if you click that it will collapse this sidebar. You can open it back up again with the small button that appears after it is collapsed.

Step 4: Create an Event.
This calendar gives you multiple ways to create an event. The simplest is to use the "Create" button in the upper left corner of the calendar. However, you can also click (single-mouse click) on the calendar at about when you want the event to be shown. You can also go to a more complex screen by double-clicking on the calendar. The "Create" button creates an event, clicking it will get you this screen:

Calendar Create Event Dialog
To work with this, as above I have added numbers referenced below:

Calendar Create Event Dialog with numbers

Add Title -- The title of the event as it will appear both on the calendar, and in any invitations that are emailed. It is good to use a fairly specific, but not really long title.
Type of event: The calendar is designed for many purposes, in a real world office situation, the "Out of office" reminder might be useful, for example. If you want to know more about the options you should check out the Calendar's "Help" feature. For our purposes we will assume you are adding an "Event".
Dates and Times -- The left date and time are the start date/time, the right date/time are the end date/time. You can click on each of these. If you are adding an event that is not a meeting, you might want to set the start date and end date as different, but for a meeting you most likely would want to leave them the same. Clicking on them brings up drop down options that should be easy to figure (click to select ...).
Add guests -- This allows you to enter guests, if they are people who have already used the West Kingdom G Suites typing the first letter should bring up anyone whose name or email address starts with that letter. You can enter new email addresses if you wish. NOTE: These do not have to be westkingdom.org email addresses. However, if they are not already someone who has used the G Suites at all they will appear in a red box, and you may not be able to add them. (See "More Options" below -- the screen that appears will allow you to add people not currently using G Suites to the guest list.)
In testing this it should be noted that this has features for checking other peoples calendars for availability (times they do not have other events on their calendars), and you are told about this feature. You can ignore it. As soon as you add one valid guest, your information shows with "Organizer" under, and the "Add location" section adds "Join with Google Meet".
Add location -- this assumes you want to meet in person, or provide specific information, an address (for example: for an SCA event this would be useful). As soon as you have added in (4) above, then the dialog will have expanded and shows "Join with Google Meet". If you do not want that, click the "X" to the right. For our purposes, as this whole document is about Google Meet, we want it, so leave it.
Add description -- This is useful for someone not familar with the purpose of the event/meeting.
More options -- This brings up a screen very much like "double-click" on the calendar would do It is all the detail about the event. This is a full screen option, to exit use the "X" in the upper left corner which will take you back to where you were. This screen gives some very useful features which will be discussed below under "Double-Click on Calendar or ...".
Save -- Save this event to the calendar. Rather important item.

Double-Click on Calendar or use "More options:" from the Create Event dialog

Calendar Create Event Dialog
The following will detail some items not mentioned above or need some discussion.

All day -- "All day" means the event does not have start/end times. It will show on the calendar a little differently (at the "beginning of the day").
Does not repeat -- "Does not repeat" is a drop-down list allowing options for repeating events. If you want to have a weekly meeting, for example, you can set it here rather than creating the event for each week. This can get fairly detailed, I leave it to you to experiment, if needed.
Notification -- Important. You can change this from "Notification" which is really only useful if the invitees and the organizer use the Google calendar on their phone, and/or have the Google calendar up in a browser at the time (or other features such as "Allow Notifications" are set). Otherwise, you probably want to change "Notification" to "Email", and then you can specify how far out to send the email by changing the options to the right. It is heartily suggested that you use the email option to remind people at least the day before.
Add guests -- it should be noted you can add guests here that are NOT people who have used the Google G Suites before, and are therefore not available to search for. These people will get the email notification if you set one, but they cannot see the calendar itself. Just the notification email.
Guest "Options" -- the defaults are pretty good here, and probably ought to be left alone.

Running the Meeting

If you are running a meeting "on the fly" you should be "in" the meeting now. If you are running a scheduled meeting from the calendar, you should have a link to the meeting, preferably from an email invite, which you can click to join the meeting.

Once you are in the meeting, here's a brief overview of the screen. In the middle of the screen will be the image from your camera. You can fiddle with it to adjust it if needed. At the top and bottom are some things you need to be aware of.

In the upper right you have a couple of icons that you can click:

Number of Attendees -- The first icon shows the number of people attending the meeting, and if you click it, will open a pane on the right that lists them.
Chat Mode --The second icon puts you in chat mode, you can type something at the bottom to communicate silently while the meeting is happening.

It should be noted that both of these open a wide sidebar on the right, to close it just click on the browser window surface and the sidebar will close.

At the bottom of the screen is this bar:

If you click the up arrow, you will get the option to "Add People" to the current meeting:
Enter appropriate email addresses and people will be sent the link ...
Turn on or off the microphone. The current icon shows the status, so if the microphone looks like that above, it is turned on. If it has a reddish background and has a line through it, it is off.
Leave the meeting.
Turn on or off the camera/video. The current icon shows the status, so if the camera looks like that above, it is turned on. If it has a reddish background and has a line through it, it is off.
Turn on or off captions.
Places you in "Present" mode, which allows you to share part of your computer's screen, a specific software package such as Word, PowerPoint, what have you ...
Brings up a set of options that looks like:
The "Settings" option may be useful if you have multiple cameras and/or microphones, as you can change what is being used for the conference.

At this point, the meeting is now on. If you sent invites to people, once they get them, and click the appropriate link they will be in the meeting as well.

It is my understanding that you do not have to have a westkingdom.org email address to join a meeting, but you do have to have one to have access to the West Kingdom's G Suite in the first place. Hence, the person setting up the meeting must have a "westkingdom.org" email address, other attendees do not.

Suggestions

The organizer should try to be online and ready to go a bit early for the meeting, so they can be there when others show up.
Microphones: you should probably ask people to either be very good about not talking unless needed, or ask them to turn off their microphones unless asked to turn them on. If you need someone else to talk to the group, they could turn on their microphone and then when done, turn it off. Otherwise total chaos might occur as everyone talks at/over each other.
Interesting note about microphones and mute: the administrator can mute someone, but cannot "unmute" them. To mute an idividual, hold the mouse over the three dots in the lower left of someone's image, move the mouse over the microphone and click it. That will mute them. For the individual to be "unmuted" they have to do it themselves from the bottom bar as shown above.
People can use the chat option to ask questions and should be encouraged to do so.
The presenter may want to share their screen or some software package (PowerPoint, Word, image viewer, whatever). The "Present Now" button shown in the bottom of the screen should allow for this. Some testing may be required to get it right.

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