At Sibme, we use the new Huddle Conferences feature to hold two staff meetings a week. With Sibme’s Zoom integration, we’re able to schedule and host live web-conferences directly from a Huddle. Our entire team simply logs into the Sibme Huddle, clicks on Conferences, and joins the meeting. And if someone misses our live meeting, it’s no problem. The recording of the meeting is automatically shared from Zoom to the Huddle as a video, allowing us to continue the conversation after our live meeting with time-stamped comments and Huddle Discussions. Huddle conferences is a premium feature in Sibme, but we are offering it for free until July 1st for any account that requests it.  Both Zoom and WebEx integrations are currently available through our Huddle conferences tab.

Don’t have Zoom or WebEx? Use whatever conferencing tool you have and record the meeting. You can then upload the recorded meeting to your Huddle for anyone who missed it or those that want to refer back to it later.

 

Typically, this is how we structure our meetings in Sibme:

1. In Huddle Discussions: share the meeting agenda and any questions we’ll discuss. This allows people to log in early to read the agenda and start a conversation ahead of time. We also share any relevant resources as attachments to the discussion so people can access them easily from their computers or mobile devices. This prevents us from having to keep track of conversations shared in our already cluttered email inboxes!
2. Using Huddle Conferences: schedule a web conference on the day and time you want to hold the live meeting (we use Zoom, but you could also use WebEx). The host logs into the Huddle and starts the meeting and everyone else simply logs in and clicks “join.” Huddle Conferences tracks attendance, including the date and time each participant joined and how long they were in the meeting. Huddle Conferences can be configured to send you email notifications before a meeting is about to start and can be integrated with iCal, Google Calendar, and Outlook.. 
3. After the meeting: If you choose to record the meeting, a recording will automatically upload to the Huddle so participants can join asynchronously, ask questions, and discuss topics through time-stamped comments and Huddle Discussions. If a participant missed the live session, and you make the meeting a required event, you can track their “attendance” in analytics.  

In these chaotic times, expectations for schools and teachers will change rapidly. If you want to be sure that everyone “gets the memo” on changes, put it in a Huddle. You’ll be able to offer a flexible way for your team to consume the information while ensuring that nobody “missed the email” or “couldn’t log into the web conference.” And because chat in Sibme videos and discussions is live, you can interact in real-time.