A Guide to Setting Up Virtual Meeting Rooms in 2024

Meetings are a key component of any workplace. But getting everyone into a single room may be challenging or expensive, especially if you have participants located across the country or around the world.

A virtual meeting room can be an excellent alternative, largely replicating the in-person experience and allowing everyone to fully participate. However, not all virtual meeting room platforms are the same. Below, we’ll dive into how virtual meeting rooms work, which features to consider, and what you can do to make the most of this useful technology.

Introduction to virtual meeting rooms

Virtual meeting rooms work equally well for both formal and informal meetings, though you may want to adjust certain settings depending on the type of meeting. Formal meetings, such as committee meetings or board meetings, typically have a strict agenda and follow specific protocols. Informal meetings, such as brainstorming sessions or training classes, are looser and may be more participant-driven.

Regardless of the type of meeting, a virtual meeting space should serve as a comfortable place for participants to gather. Great virtual meeting platforms provide all the necessary tools to run meetings smoothly and efficiently while allowing everyone the opportunity to participate.

What is a virtual meeting room?

A virtual meeting room is an online stand-in for whatever type of space you need. With a few tweaks, it can become a virtual boardroom, a virtual conference hall, or even a virtual training lab. Flexible setup options and seamless integration with your existing workflows create an atmosphere that fosters true collaboration, regardless of physical distance.

When you need virtual meeting rooms

There are three basic scenarios that call for a virtual meeting room:

• Companywide meetings. Small, single-office companies may be able to get everyone into the same physical space. But if you have multiple offices, an in-person all-hands meeting can be difficult to organize and expensive to implement. Virtual meeting rooms make it easy to call everyone together to share important information quickly.
• Remote team collaboration. If you have remotely distributed workers, a virtual meeting system is essential. Face-to-face contact is one of the best ways to foster collaboration, but bringing everyone into the office at once is not always feasible. This is especially true if your team members are geographically dispersed.
• Meeting with external clients. Sometimes it makes sense to bring a client to your office or to visit their location. But both you and your clients are busy, and it’s not always easy to find time to travel. Your clients may also be located in another state or country. Virtual meetings solve the challenges of distance and scheduling by taking travel out of the equation.

How to set up a virtual meeting room

Virtual conference rooms are highly customizable, allowing you to choose the best fit for each specific meeting. But there are several things you should do ahead of time to make your conference a success, regardless of the specific customizations you choose:

• Assign technical assistants to help design and create the meeting room
• Create channels for announcements and introductions
• Send out invitations at least a few weeks in advance
• Restrict the use of @here or @everyone tags to relevant personnel to avoid chaos
• Work with your technical assistants to build the look and feel that match the overall tone of the meeting
• Log in to the space to troubleshoot any issues at least a day ahead of time

Benefits of using virtual meeting rooms

The best virtual meeting rooms offer quite a few benefits for companies of all sizes. These include:

Improved team collaboration and communication

When everyone is on-site at the same hours, it’s easy for team members to organize both formal and informal brainstorming sessions or other meetings. They can also simply walk down the hall when needed to communicate face-to-face. When your teams are remotely distributed or working flexible, hybrid shifts, though, it’s not as simple. But a virtual meeting room lets you re-create that valuable in-person experience. You’ll want a platform that is easy to use and seamlessly integrated with your workflows. The goal is to make remote collaboration just as simple as walking down the hall would be.

Increased productivity and efficiency

Ongoing collaboration is essential to productivity and efficiency. When each person feels like an island, it’s easy for things to be overlooked or for misunderstandings to occur. Virtual meeting rooms reduce these risks by keeping everyone on the same page. Whether you’re giving remote presentations or a few team members are collaborating on a document, virtual meeting rooms help to build a shared vision.

Cost savings and reduced travel expenses

In today’s highly digital era, your best client may be halfway around the world, while your key team members are spread across four states. It would be possible to fly everyone in for an important meeting, but the expenses could be prohibitive. A virtual conference venue offers a far more cost-effective solution. Everyone can participate in the moment from the comfort of their home or office without paying for airline tickets or coping with jet lag.

Key features of the best virtual meeting rooms

The best virtual meeting rooms offer several features that provide real value. Examples include:

High-quality video and audio conferencing

When considering which virtual meeting system to choose, top-notch video and audio quality should be non-negotiable. How can you possibly make the most of an important meeting if the audio keeps cutting out or the video is grainy? Be sure to conduct test runs before you implement the software and again before each meeting.

Screen sharing and document collaboration

During an in-person meeting, it’s easy enough to simply pass around a document or project a presentation. Be sure that the virtual meeting room software you choose is just as convenient. You’ll want participants to be able to share screens with just a couple of clicks and to collaborate as needed on all the major types of document files.

Interactive whiteboard for brainstorming and ideation

Whiteboards are where all the magic happens when you’re in the blue-sky phase of development. They can also be helpful throughout a project’s lifespan as you continue to refine ideas. Make sure that whatever virtual conference space you select has an interactive whiteboard that is easy for everyone to access and use.

Seamless integration with existing workflows

You don’t want to waste valuable meeting time asking everyone to click into and out of a bunch of different apps. Instead, your meeting platform should seamlessly integrate with the tools you already use. The idea is to support your existing workflows rather than running counter or even parallel to them.

Advanced security measures for data protection

All companies have a significant amount of proprietary information. Your business is also legally and ethically responsible for protecting your team members’, vendors’, and clients’ personal data. Yet the rate of hacks and other cybercrimes is only growing. You’ll need a trustworthy virtual meeting platform that uses advanced security measures to ensure that all data is safe and protected.

Customizable features to meet specific business needs

Every business is different, with unique needs and goals. Even within a single organization, informal brainstorming sessions have different requirements than formal presentations by the CEO. Look for a platform that offers plenty of customizable features, and then take the time to get to know how those features work. Don’t be afraid to play around with them before each meeting to ensure that you have the best settings to meet that day’s specific goals.

Best practices for effective virtual meetings

Even the best virtual meeting place is only a tool. It’s up to you to make sure you’re following all the best practices to run your virtual meetings effectively.

Setting clear meeting objectives and agendas

Some types of informal gatherings work best with only general, flexible guidelines. However, the vast majority of meetings, especially those that are more formal, need clear objectives and agendas. Before you call the meeting, take a few moments to think through what you want to accomplish.
Then turn that vision into actionable goals and objectives. Determine an agenda that will fit the timeline of the meeting, and don’t forget to allow time for each speaker to take a few questions. Distribute copies of the objectives and agenda several days or weeks ahead of the meeting so that people can prepare.

Engaging participants and encouraging active participation

Any meeting, whether in-person or virtual, lives or dies by the amount of engagement it generates. It’s often less distracting to use a virtual meeting room with avatars that can stand in for the participants who are watching, but be sure to switch to a webcam shot of whoever is speaking. Throughout the meeting, ask questions. Solicit feedback. Conduct live polls. Open up Q&A sessions at the end of each panelist’s presentation. All these steps will help everyone feel like they’re part of the group, no matter where they are geographically located.

Using breakout rooms for focused discussions

Virtual meeting platforms with breakout rooms are incredibly helpful for larger, all-hands type of meetings, as well as large group meetings designed to address a specific problem. Smaller groups of participants can gather in these breakout rooms for focused, intense discussions and then bring their results back to the group as a whole. This is also a great way to engage shyer or more reserved participants, who may be reluctant to speak up in an unfamiliar crowd.

Best virtual meeting platforms to make collaboration effective and engaging

So, which platforms have the key features detailed above? Here is our roundup of the best virtual meeting platforms for 2024 and beyond.

Slack

Slack’s virtual meeting room, huddles, is part of our comprehensive work operating system. We make it easy to jump on a huddle from wherever you are in the larger Slack platform. You can customize your huddle with colorful backgrounds, emoji, and more, effortlessly setting the stage for whatever type of meeting you want. Even better? All the messages, links, and documents from a huddle are automatically saved in Slack, providing a single source of truth for everyone to reference later.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams makes sense for those who are already working primarily in the Microsoft environment. It’s included in all Microsoft 365 plans, allowing enterprise team members to quickly collaborate on Microsoft files and documents. You can add features such as Teams Rooms for additional customization.

Zoom

Zoom is easy to scale as your business grows. A free basic subscription offers the features most small businesses need, while an enterprise plan can support up to 1,000 simultaneous participants with features such as interactive whiteboards and unlimited cloud storage. Mobile connections are also surprisingly robust, making it easy for people to connect while on the go.

Google Meet

Google Meet can work well for large businesses since it’s included with an enterprise-level subscription to Google Workspace. Not only is it fully integrated with all Google apps, but it also supports in-domain livestreaming. This means that you can hold an audio or video meeting within the private domain or network for your individual organization.

Putting it all together

A virtual meeting room is essential for any organization with remotely distributed workers or clients. It saves you the time and expense of flying people in for meetings while providing a similarly collaborative environment. But you’ll want to be sure to choose a platform that is fully integrated with your current workflows, provides breakout rooms for small-group discussions, and is easy to customize for different meeting environments.

If you want to learn more about how Slack’s comprehensive work operating system can streamline your operations, including its robust virtual meeting solutions, contact our sales team today.