Everyone in the corporate and business domain has had their fair share of run-ins with Meet—Google’s specialized video conferencing application for mobile phones and compatible internet browsers. The tech giant has been focusing a lot on Google Meet lately. From enabling noise cancellation for all users to letting individuals connect third-party video conferencing apps with Meet, the software in question is seemingly getting an upgrade with each passing day.
That’s because Google Meet will let you join calls directly from the rest of this company’s desktop productivity applications, as the official Google Workspace Updates blog announced recently. Whether it’s Google Docs, Google Sheets, or Google Slides—prepare to collaborate seamlessly with co-workers. Let’s look into the working mechanism of this newly added feature in the section above.
How to join Meet calls from Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides
Collaborating with other people in your workspace is all set on its course to becoming better than ever on Google Docs, Google Sheets, and even Google Slides. A dedicated button in all three of these applications allows you to pull off both: Joining someone else’s hosted video call or creating your own and presenting the document to relevant users.
It’s worth noting here that the new functionality is joining a Meet call and not about hosting a video conference yourself. That’s because the latter has already been prevalent in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides since early last year. The new functionality lets users present whatever document they are working on while engaging in a conversation with other people.
You have to open a shared document in any main Google app, such as Docs. Once done, click on the “Google Meet” icon in the top-right corner of the web app’s interface. Doing so will allow you to join any ongoing video call associated with that document without having to open Google Meet separately yourself. Below is a demo showing the feature in action.
Joining a Google Meet call from Google Docs (Source: Google)
Otherwise, you would need a link to the meeting or a particular code to get into the hosted meeting. All that hassle is now seamlessly a thing of the past as Google has introduced this cutting-edge feature right into its front-running productivity apps.
It’s worth clearing, however, that you won’t be able to join a meeting if no one has hosted one in the first place. That is to say; the “Google Meet” icon won’t be visible in the top-right corner of the app’s interface in this case. You’ll only see the “Present to a meeting” button to allow you to start a video call all by yourself.
The “Present to a meeting” button in Google Docs
That’s all the important part about this freshly released feature for swift Google Meet integration. Speaking of release, let’s explore the subject further and talk about the functionality’s availability and roll-out procedure in the next section.
- Recommended from Chrome Ready: Top 15 Google Meet extensions for Chromebook.
Availability and roll-out of the new Meet feature
A couple of weeks ago, Google Docs was revamped with the new emoji reactions feature. However, this functionality hasn’t been made available for free Google Workspace users, and only a select number of Workspace accounts got bumped up with the new feature. This isn’t the case with the latest Meet update, thankfully.
All Google Workspace accounts, including legacy G Suite users, Business customers, and free account holders, will be able to enjoy the effortless call-joining feature in Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides. To be clear, the functionality will also arrive for the following accounts of Google Workspace:
- Google Workspace Essentials
- Business Starter
- Business Standard
- Business Plus
- Enterprise Standard
- Enterprise Plus
The roll-out depends on the type of domain your administrator has set for your device. There are two major release tracks for Google Workspace customers. One is “Rapid Release.” The roll-out for the feature in question concerning the Rapid Release domain has already started on April 12 and will continue for up to 15 days.
The other type of release track for Google Workspace accounts is “Scheduled Release.” This one will start on May 2 next month, and it might take around 15 days for the feature to become visible on your end. So do sit tight if you cannot see the functionality yet on your device.
Lastly, the new call-joining service will be turned on by default, and there won’t be any option in any of Google’s desktop productivity apps to toggle it off. However, if you’re an administrator, things will be different. The developers say that the feature can be turned off at the OU level, about admin privileges in the Google Workspace domain.
That’s all there is to know about the new Google Meet integration-oriented feature!
Conclusion
Google is raising its focus on improving how people use Meet in 2022. We live in an intensely competitive working world where the individual who is working the smartest will always come out on top of the food chain. The tech giant believes that increasing collaborative features, especially in Google Meet, makes workspaces more efficient and multi-faceted.
That way, one doesn’t have to delve into unnecessary steps to try and make the best of their time. Instead, meetings will be pretty inclusive and allow users of Google’s major desktop productivity applications to join the conversation with zero hassles. Pretty forward-thinking from Google, we must say. Meet is getting better as time progresses and is definitely on its way to becoming the most excellent video conferencing app to date.
