From all the videoconferencing tools that I've used, Meet must be one of the most frustrating. I work in a semi-remote team where half the team is in one location, and the other half is in another location. When we do daily standups we use Meet to discuss. But here is the problem: Meet is not designed at all to support configurations where there are multiple participants in the same room. For example if my coworker is talking, I can hear them both in my headphones and in the room (with a complimentary delay between both even though we're connected to the same network!!) Why don't you mute them you'll ask me. Well Meet ONLY supports global muting, so if I mute my coworker who is sitting right next to me, the other part of the team will not be able to hear them either! Also Meet has NO support for background voices suppression. This means that we have to do a mic dance where we keep muting us and others so that there aren't two mics activated at once. This is so frustrating!! Any Googlers do fix this?
I don’t have this problem. Maybe your video conferencing mics suck.
Well I suppose they do, it's nonetheless a shortcoming of Meet.
Maybe? The mics might perform the same on different conferencing systems
There’s no conference room you can call in from together?
I'm confused, are there multiple people in one room AND they're each doing an individual video conference on their laptop? You're supposed to just have 1 connection per meeting room. Or is everyone taking calls at their desk?
Yes, we are 5 and no fancy conference wall screen. One laptop screen is too cramped up, so we use each our own computer. Also it's convenient to be able to share one's screen to demo something someone is working on.
Maybe do the call together like a team instead of pretending you are in different rooms?
See response above, no wall screen; laptop screen too small for 5.
op then meet isnt really the issue... Get more funding for meeting rooms..
Use skype for business
That's just not even funny!
Order a wall screen via guts, it'll be there by the morning
I don't think he works at Google
I wish I would, can't get past the screening process.
Share one microphone
What if we use headphones? If you use your colleague's mic then you hear an echo of yourself which is terrible. If you mute the headphones while talking, you won't hear the remarks of your colleagues who aren't in the same room.
Get one of these: https://chromebusinessdevices.withgoogle.com/products/4359/hangouts-meet-speakermic-black
A couple of suggestions: make sure to start meetings asking people to mute themselves if they aren't talking. This is just good virtual meeting hygiene, regardless of platform. Also, look into getting the Meet Hardware kit and hooking it up in your conference room with just any old monitor. It's not expensive. You can easily share from your computer still. It has a good microphone designed for rooms. Lastly, I agree that the platform leaves much to be desired.
Thanks for your suggestions. How could I reach out to someone working on Meet? I feel like these issues might be the result of SV bubble where everyone have conference rooms with big screens. Not true for some legacy companies and coworking spaces.
I'm happy to try and make an intro if you would like to talk to product, though I can tell you right now that the product gaps aren't due to a Sunnyvale bubble. This is a longtime, systemic problem with all Google messaging products (which Meet falls under). Especially Enterprise products. It took years just to get a phone bridge included in Meet (the lack of one was a deal breaker for most customers).
Use Amazon Chime! Basic features are free to use. It has gotten really good over time.
Use zoom
I'm stuck with the tool that my team uses. We use the Google suite everywhere, would be hard to convince coworkers & mgmt to switch to an entirely different platform thay costs extra money.
Also can I do local mutes in Zoom?