ROOM was designed to be intuitive so that you spend less time ramping up and more time doing. There are two ways to get into a ROOM meeting, both easy: as a meeting organizer or as an invited guest. But once inside, you still need to interact with other participants, navigate around the 3D venue and use the tools if you want to get the most out of your experience.
To find out how to organize a meeting and invite guests, see our "How do I schedule a meeting in ROOM?" article under our Help Page's "Navigating in Room" section.
If entering as an invitee (no subscription, downloads or installation required), you'll begin by either clicking on an invitation email sent by the meeting organizer or by shared link via another method, e.g. chat app, social media venue, etc.
Conversely, a meeting organizer (a user subscribing to a ROOM license or plan, either the free Basic plan or the Founders' Plan required) will begin the process by selecting his/her venue of choice from the ROOM Dashboard (meeting venue selection) page. The availability of meeting venues and time limits for each meeting is contingent on the meeting organizer's subscription plan tier (not all rooms available to Founder plan subscribers will appear nor be available to Basic/free plan users).
All invitees' links will be directed to the following page and present the invitees with this popup, prompting a name for the user's virtual name tag and providing an interface to select his/her choice of microphone and camera (if other, non-default gear is preferable).
We've segregated the tools and functions you'll encounter in-meeting into three sections to get you started:
- Interaction
- Navigation
- Tools
Interaction (with Guests and Objects)
Switch Speaker: Your ROOM meeting will start with a default group shot/wide view. You can scroll the mouse wheel to Zoom closer to the speaker/s within view or you can click on a particular person to instantly change your camera’s framing and focus onto him/her.
Normally you can switch your focus to any other speakers at will by clicking on their video cutout, but when your camera optimizes its view on a single speaker that you've chosen, all other speakers will be out of frame. Fear not! Their videos will continue to stream at the screen’s header, rendered compactly as “talking heads” (a.k.a. Top Bar videos). You always have the option of scrolling the mouse wheel down to view the entire room and see all participants at one glance again. Or alternatively, you can...
Toggle Speaker Focus: To immediately change focus to a speaker outside your camera’s view or to quickly toggle between speakers, just click on the desired person’s Top Bar video. See how it's done in the video below.
By the way, if you ever try to click on a participant who is moving in-between tables (using a feature called "Walk mode"), ROOM will not be able to activate the "Focus On" feature. Once the participant returns to a seat at the table, you'll be able to use the "Focus On" feature on that person.
Regardless of how the "talking head videos" are arranged, you'll always be able to see everyone in your meeting at the same time, so there's no need to constantly switch views to focus on who's talking at any given time.
Guests Face Me: Sometimes, especially in large rooms or venues with many seats, it will appear that some guests are not quite facing you. This is just your camera's perspective; in reality all guests can see you just fine, But, to make everything appear more natural from your point of view, just click O to get everyone to face you! See how it's done in the clip below.
Changing Seats: If you'd like to switch positions to another place at your meeting table, just click on any empty seat to instantly change your location. When you hover your cursor over any empty seat, you'll notice that the seat will automatically highlight in yellow, but you have to click on it to actually swap seats. You can optionally choose another seat at another table if your venue is large enough to accommodate several meeting groups.
Focus on Screen/Tablet/Interactive props: Click on a wall-mounted screen or a standing white board to engage in various activities, including games, experiments. You can write on, or post notes onto the white boards. As with empty seats, interactive objects will highlight in yellow when you toggle over them, putting them in your "crosshairs" before you make your selection.
If someone in your meeting is sharing his/her screen, you'll be able to see the content on any of the wall-mounted monitors at a distance. If you want to see the screen close up, just click on it. Clicking on it again will get you back to normal view.
Adjust Your Video Avatar/Cutout: (a.k.a. Mirror Mode) This feature lets you adjust your cutout’s brightness, position and scale - just click on the circle with your streaming "head video" at the top center of your screen to enable the controls.
- Navigation (Changing Screen’s View and Video Cutout Height Adjustment)
Screens’ Views Change: Here are the most fundamental controls for looking around.
ROOM's default table-top camera's view provides you more control & better-framed views
Whether you're an experienced ROOM veteran accustomed to using the old "Left-button-down + drag" or a brand new user, you'll no doubt appreciate this new camera control/view mode that will make looking around your meeting vastly easier with half the effort!
Pan slowly or pan fast, every distortion-free avatar stays perfectly synced, facing your point of view. The secret is that the virtual camera is now set in the middle of your meeting table. It even works well in oblong tables or auditorium-type venues.
Any panning you do with your LEFT-MOUSE BUTTON DOWN will frame the other participants perfectly as your virtual camera rotates around the table. And if there are a few participants that can't fit within the frame, don't worry - All speakers that are out of frame will have a small 2D overhead icon as you pan around, so you can immediately change your focus to any out-of-frame speaker by just clicking on their 2D video "head icon" to instantly reframe the camera, bringing them into frame in front of you.
HINT: If you use your mouse wheel to zoom extensively, you might not quite be able to zoom back to the optimized "starting" perspective that you had when entering the room. A simple fix is to click on another (empty) chair at your table to reset the camera zoom's default perspective.
Naturally, you can click back to your original seat if you preferred to remain there for the duration of the meeting.
Zooming
- Zoom Out (widen your view/move back): Drag the mouse wheel toward you...
- Zoom in (narrow your view/move in): Drag the mouse wheel away from you...
- The old Left click + drag will still work if you momentarily toggle off the new table-top camera view (by clicking on the "c" key, as explained above). Left/Right panning or Up/Down tilting (with or without zooming) is the objective of using this mode.
This diagram illustrates the drag/move panning just described in any direction.
HINT: For advanced users, ROOM has released a new feature called "Camera Mode", especially made to provide you with several camera angles that you can switch between during your meeting, instead of just the single, default camera angle. It's a different way of sitting through the meeting and focusing on different speakers or groups at will, like a TV broadcast director. And best of all, you have absolute control of setting up each camera angle "preset" (up to 10) and when to use them!
To learn more, go to: CAMERA MODE (User-chosen preset camera angles/switching)
Height Adjustment (your view of others' Video Cutouts)
If it looks like any of the other participants' cutouts aren't quite at eye level with you, you have the option of engaging the RIGHT-mouse button and dragging the offending avatar higher or lower than their current position. This will only change your view of them without affecting their actual height or apparent height for everybody else.
Here are some other important basics
- Tools & Communication (from Chat to Screenshare, Help, Settings and more)
Here's an overview of each of the tools at the screen's bottom tray with their respective tool-tip. Note that when the icons are toggled to be "active/on" their icon will become more prominent (greater contrast).
The Microphone and Camera icons on the extreme left are simple toggles, allowing you to switch these devices on/off at will. If you want to make a change to one or both of these devices, you'll need to navigate over to the icons on the right, and select the "..." (More options) icon, which contains Device Settings as one of the selectable options. In choosing that option, you'll open a popup that lets you change your meeting audio and video hardware from a drop-down list.
Screenshare: The Screen Sharing icon, to the immediate right of the Camera/Microphone icon, will facilitate the sharing of your screen/window with the rest of the guests with a preview of your computer's display on a popup box, as seen below. It provides you with the choice of sharing the contents of a particular browser tab, your monitor's primary screen contents or even an app's content that you currently have open.
A persistent message on the sharing user's own in-meeting screen will allow the screen share experience to be quickly deactivated at will.
It's important to note that ROOM is unique in the way it shows shared screens, specifically in that it displays them in the room's virtual white boards/wall monitors (unlike other apps in the market that simply take over the entirety of all attendees' screens). If there are tablets available in front of each attendee, on the meeting table, the shared content will also be displayed there.
Chat: You'll find the Chat icon nestled with the rest of the tools on the far right of the screen. When selected it will open a chat window at the screen's right (a shared chat thread for all guests), where you'll also be able to share links and files through the course of the meeting.
Copy Invitation Link: is now a dedicated button to expedite the process of sharing a link with prospective guests for a meeting in progress. Upon pressing it a message will briefly appear at the screen's top right informing you of your action's success.
More settings: This icon will invoke a popup box featuring several choices...
- Manual
- Full Screen
- Participants
- Report a Problem (A link to request Help/Support)
- Device Settings
Here are the details for the actions listed therein:
The Manual is a minimalist cheat sheet popup with the most common navigation tips:
- Drag-Left mouse button to pan your screen's view side to side
- Mouse wheel to Zoom in/out
One additional tip that is not included pertains to the panning action, which you can also do using the left/right keyboard arrows (which is easier/faster in large meetings to keep everyone in frame as you pan)
In a future release, we will replace the compact Tip popup with a more comprehensive one including segregated types of commands/actions, similar to the one seen here.
Full Screen is simply a toggle to maximize your viewing experience.
Participants is a two-purposed screen often used by the meeting's organizer to review attendance. It can also be used to invite additional participants via:
- the "Copy Link" button
- the "Send" (airplane) icon
- the social media icons for Google or Facebook
Report a Problem will take the user to an online form from which any issues can be reported and a support center help ticket will be automatically generated to expedite the resolution process.
Device Settings, previously mentioned earlier in this article, invokes a popup form that provides microphone and camera device selection and is often practical to mitigate any audio or video issues that might arise during the course of a meeting.
And finally, the EXIT icon provides you with a way to... well, exit your meeting! We'd be glad to hear from you after your ROOM experience, by the way. Tell us how we're doing by taking a moment to rate your experience on the interactive form that displays after the meeting!
OTHER TOOLS (non-icon controls)
Take a Screenshot: Press F8 on your PC to take a photo of your screen's current view.
Head Tracking: Press H in some rooms to activate this mode. This will move your camera to match your changing head position and display the meeting's participants and surroundings in a corresponding perspective. Of course, the other guests will probably wonder what you're looking at, as your glance drifts!
For more detailed walk-throughs and screenshots, please refer to the specific use-case articles in the relevant sections pertaining to the use of tools, performance issues, general account questions and more.
To learn more about ROOM's new Camera Mode (advanced camera framing and shot saving/toggling), please go to: CAMERA MODE (User-chosen preset camera angles/switching)