How to Create a Meeting Room

Scheduling and setting up a video meeting, from who can get in to recording and invitations.

This guide walks the room setup form from top to bottom for a video meeting, where everyone can be on camera. Steps 1 through 10 follow the form in order, with best practices beside the steps they apply to. A checklist at the end covers what to confirm before the meeting starts.

Written for Enterprise accounts, which include every option shown here.

1. Sign In and Find Your Way Around

Sign in with your email address. You land on your calendar. The top navigation moves between Calendar, Rooms, Recordings, Reports, and Settings. The calendar switches between Month, Week, and Day.

Calendar with scheduled meetings and the top navigation

2. Start a New Room

Double-click a date on the calendar to schedule a room for that day, or open the Rooms tab and click Create Room.

The Rooms list shows when each room was created and by whom, its Room ID, its start time, whether it is locked, and whether it checks attendees against an invite list. Select a room to Join, Edit, Share (copies the room's link), Invite, or Disable it.

Room setup is a single scrolling form. You can work through it in any order, and everything can be changed later with Edit.

Rooms list with the Create Room button and the room action bar

3. Name the Room and Apply a Template

Enter a Room Name your team and your guests will recognize. It appears in the invitation and on the calendar.

Above the name, Room Template applies a saved set of settings. Templates are created in Settings, under Room Templates, and the Manage Templates link takes you there. If one template is set as your default, it is applied automatically whenever you open this form. Templates are offered only when creating a room, not when editing one.

BEST PRACTICE: Save a template for each kind of meeting you run

A template carries every setting that is not about one particular meeting: features, room access, the waiting room, recording and session limits. It never carries a schedule or an attendee list, so one meeting's guests cannot follow it into the next. Two or three templates, for example “Client Meeting,” “Team Standup,” and “All-Hands,” save you most of this form each time. You can save up to 10. More in How to Use Room Templates and Invitation Notes.

Room Template selector above the Room Name field

4. Set the Schedule

Choose a Room Type:

Standing Room: always available, with no start or end time. It does not appear on the calendar.
Scheduled Room: set for a specific date and time, and shown on your calendar. Calendar invitations adjust to each recipient's own time zone.

A scheduled room asks for a Start Time and a Duration, and shows the end time beside the duration. For a meeting that happens more than once, use the two buttons under the start time:

+ Add another day: pick extra dates by hand. They are listed under Also meets on, and moving the first day moves the rest with it.
+ Repeat: repeat weekly on the weekdays you choose, for the rest of this month, 3 months, 6 months, or 1 year.

Time Zone is where the meeting takes place, and the times above are read in it. When you edit a room later, changing the time zone keeps the time as displayed and moves the meeting by the difference between the zones, so check the start time afterwards and re-send the invitation.

BEST PRACTICE: Use Repeat for a recurring meeting, and a Standing Room for an always-open one

A weekly meeting set up with Repeat keeps one room, one link and one attendee list for the whole series, and each date shows on your calendar. A room that should simply be open whenever you need it, such as your own meeting room, is better as a Standing Room. Past five hand-picked days, the form offers to convert the room to a Standing Room for that reason.

Scheduled Room with start time, duration, add another day, repeat, and time zone

5. Leave Webinar Mode Off and Set Room Access

Room Mode holds one switch, Webinar Mode. Leave it off for a meeting. Webinar Mode turns the room into a one-to-many broadcast, where speakers are on camera and everyone else watches, and it changes several of the options further down the form. Webinars have their own guide: How to Create a Webinar Room.

Room Access decides who is allowed in:

Open: anyone with the room link can join.
Invite Only: only attendees on the room's attendee list can join. Each one confirms who they are with a code sent to their email address.
Invite + Guests: attendees are verified by email, and anyone else can still join with limited access.

Under Invite + Guests, choose a Guest Access Mode:

Standard: guests join with restricted permissions, and a host can give them more once they are in the room.
View-Only: guests can only watch the live video stream.

BEST PRACTICE: Match Room Access to the meeting

Open suits internal meetings, where the link is all anyone needs. Invite Only suits a confidential meeting with a fixed list. Invite + Guests suits most client meetings: the people you expect are verified, and the colleague a client brings along can still get in.

GOOD TO KNOW: View-Only guests need the meeting to be recorded or streamed

The stream a View-Only guest watches runs only while the meeting is being recorded or streamed. If you use View-Only, turn on Auto-record in step 8 so there is something to watch from the moment they arrive.

Webinar Mode switched off, Room Access options, and Guest Access Mode

6. Build the Attendee List

Choosing Invite Only or Invite + Guests shows the Attendee List. Add people one at a time with Add Attendee, or use Import to bring in the attendees of a previous room. Duplicate email addresses are merged automatically.

For each attendee, Name and Email are required. Phone is optional, and is what lets you send them an SMS invitation later. Under Permissions, you choose whether they can upload and download files in the room.

Two optional roles change what an attendee can do:

Co-Host: full host privileges, including room controls, breakout rooms, and managing other attendees.
Observer: watches the meeting and nothing else. No other room features, and the meeting must be recorded or streamed for them to see it.

BEST PRACTICE: Add a co-host to any meeting you might not open yourself

A co-host can admit people from the waiting room, start the recording and manage attendees, so the meeting can begin without you. Co-hosts can also be alerted when a guest is waiting (step 7).

GOOD TO KNOW: Every attendee needs their own email address

The code that lets a verified attendee in is sent to the email address on their entry, and the room recognizes verified attendees by that address. Two entries sharing one address will not work: only the first can ever be reached.

Add Attendee window with name, email, phone, the Files permission, and the Co-Host and Observer roles

7. Choose the Room Features

Under Room Features, turn on what this meeting needs:

Video / Audio: live video and audio for everyone.
Chat: text messages in the room.
Files: upload, present, annotate, and share files.
Media Player: play a video or audio file for everyone.
Teleconferencing: a dial-in phone line, so people can join the audio by phone. The room is given its Conference ID when you save it, and the invitations include the dial-in number and Conference ID automatically.
Breakout Rooms: split into smaller private groups.
Waiting Room: hold people in a waiting area until a host admits them.

With the waiting room on, two more settings appear:

Alert when a guest is waiting: if someone has been waiting for about a minute with no host in the room, MegaMeeting alerts whoever you tick: the Room creator (by email or SMS, as they choose in Settings, under Notifications), the Co-hosts (by email), or both.
Waiting room screen: what guests see while they wait. Your default screen is used unless you pick another. Screens are created in Settings, Waiting Rooms; Standard is the built-in one.

BEST PRACTICE: Keep the waiting room alert on

Without a host in the room, a guest in the waiting room has nobody to admit them. The alert means the room creator and co-hosts hear about it within a minute or so, rather than finding out from an annoyed client.

GOOD TO KNOW: Recording depends on Video / Audio

Turning Video / Audio off also turns off Recording and Auto-record, because there is nothing left to record. If a recording setting you chose has disappeared, check Video / Audio first.

Room Features with the waiting room alert and waiting room screen settings

8. Recording and Streaming

Tick Recording & Streaming, then choose one or both:

Recording: record the meeting to review and download afterwards.
RTMP Streaming: stream the meeting live to YouTube, Twitch, or any other RTMP destination. Add each destination under RTMP URLs, pressing Enter after each one.

The automatic start follows what you chose: Auto-record for recording, Auto-stream for streaming, or Auto-Start for both. Each one starts when the first participant joins. Automatic streaming needs at least one RTMP URL.

What to record is one of two modes:

Composite Layouts: the layouts you choose, recorded at the same time, each saved as its own file.
Individual Streams: each participant's audio and video saved separately, up to 15 at once.

The composite layouts are:

Grid: equal-size tiles showing everyone.
Speaker: the person talking, large, with everyone else alongside.
Single Speaker: only the person talking.

BEST PRACTICE: Record Grid and Speaker together

Grid shows who was there and how they reacted; Speaker follows the conversation and is easier to watch back. Since more than one layout can be recorded at once, take both. Individual Streams is for meetings that will be edited afterwards, where each person is cut separately.

GOOD TO KNOW: Automatic recording captures everything from the first arrival

That includes the conversation before the meeting starts and every break. Leave it off when a host will start and stop the recording, and turn it on when nobody will, or when Observers or View-Only guests are invited, since they see nothing until the meeting is recorded or streamed.

Recording and Streaming with composite layouts Grid and Speaker selected

9. Session Settings, Then Create

At the bottom of the form, Session holds the room's live controls:

Session Time Limit: everyone is disconnected when the limit is reached. No Limit allows up to 24 hours.
Lock Room: only a host can join; everyone else is blocked.
Entry Chime: plays a sound when someone joins.

GOOD TO KNOW: The time limit disconnects everyone

A meeting that runs past its limit ends for everyone at once. Set the limit to the longest the meeting could plausibly run, or leave it at No Limit.

BEST PRACTICE: Turn the entry chime off for presentations

It is useful in a small meeting, but in a large one, or while someone is presenting, every late arrival announces itself.

Click Create. Everything here can be changed afterwards with Edit.

Session settings and the Create button at the bottom of the form

10. Send Invitations

Right after you create a scheduled room, or one with an attendee list, MegaMeeting asks whether you want to invite attendees now. Choose Manage Invitations, or Later and come back any time: select the room in the Rooms list and click Invite.

Under Send as, pick a Calendar Invite, which lands directly on the attendee's calendar, an Email Invite, or SMS.
Each attendee's row shows whether that kind of invitation has already gone to them, and when. Anyone not yet sent one is selected for you, and anyone already sent one is not, so a second send is always deliberate. SMS starts with nobody selected.
Use Additional Emails, or the phone field under SMS, for people who are not on the attendee list.
Add a Note to go with the invitation. Saved Note fills it from the notes your account keeps (Settings, Invitation Notes), and your default note is already in the box.

For an Open room, you can also just send the link: select the room and click Share to copy it.

BEST PRACTICE: Re-send the calendar invitation after a change of time

Re-sending updates the entry already on each attendee's calendar rather than adding a second one. Changing the room's time without re-inviting leaves your attendees holding the old time.

GOOD TO KNOW: The invitation and the entry code are separate

Everyone receives the same invitation. The code that admits a verified attendee is sent separately, when they arrive at the room, to the email address on their attendee entry.

Invitations window with Send as options, sent status for each attendee, and the note

Before the Meeting

Is Webinar Mode off?
Does Room Access match who should get in?
Does every attendee on the list have their own correct email address?
Is there a co-host who can admit people and run the recording if you are late?
Will someone start the recording, or is automatic recording on?
If Observers or View-Only guests are coming, is automatic recording on?
Is the time zone right, and does the start time still read correctly?
Is the session time limit longer than the meeting could run?
Has the invitation gone out, and been re-sent after any change of time?

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