External meetings by link

An external meeting is a video call with a link that lets people outside your organization join with your authorization. It lives in the Meetings area of the Hub, under External meetings, and can start right away, be scheduled, or recur — always with transcription and minutes when your plan allows it.

Creating and managing external meetings requires the Manage external meetings permission (external_meetings.manage). Opening the area requires meetings.access, plus the calls feature on your plan.

Create a meeting

In External meetings, click New meeting and fill in:

• Meeting name — required, up to 160 characters.
• When it happens — Start now (the link opens as soon as you create it) or Schedule (the lobby opens at the scheduled time).
• Call mode — Everyone talks (anyone who joins can talk and turn on their camera) or Stage (only people you bring on stage can talk; everyone else watches).
• Co-organizers — shown when there are other eligible people in the organization.
• Allow transcription and minutes — shown when transcription is enabled for the organization. Participants are notified when recording starts.

Click Create link. For an immediate meeting you land straight in the room; the link is ready to copy.

Schedule for later

With Schedule selected, two more fields appear:

• Start — click to open the calendar (past days are disabled) and pick the day; next to it, type the Start time in 24-hour format.
• Planned duration (minutes) — required for a scheduled meeting.

The scheduled meeting shows up under Scheduled, with buttons to copy the Link, Calendar (see below) and Open. Anyone opening the link early sees the lobby with a countdown: the lobby opens 15 minutes before the scheduled start.

Recurring meeting (same link every time)

1. In the same form, with Schedule selected, turn on Repeat (same link).
2. The weekday chips Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun appear — the day of the chosen date is already selected. Click any others you want:
   • team daily → Mon to Fri;
   • three-times-a-week sync → Mon, Wed and Fri;
   • weekly meeting → a single day.
3. Click Create link. The series appears in the Recurring strip at the top of the page, with the schedule spelled out (“Mon, Wed and Fri at 10:00”) and a badge (“Mon–Fri”, “3x/week” or “Weekly”).

How a series works:

• The link is fixed. Send it once to the group and you’re done — it’s the same for every occurrence.
• On each meeting day the room is created automatically when the first person opens the link, from 15 minutes before until 12 hours after the scheduled time. Outside that window, whoever opens the link sees when the next meeting is.
• Each occurrence gets its own minutes: every meeting day becomes a regular meeting in the list, with separate transcription and minutes.
• The time is the creator’s local time; people in other time zones see the label converted to their own.
• Cancel series (in the Recurring strip) asks for confirmation. The link stops working, but past meetings and their minutes are preserved.

Add to Google Calendar

The Calendar button is available on scheduled meetings and on recurring series. It opens Google Calendar with the event ready: title, time (one-hour duration), the room link in the description and — for a series — the recurrence set to the right weekdays.

To invite people, add the guests on the Google Calendar screen before saving: Google sends the invitations by email with the room link. No extra login and no integration to configure — it works with any Google account.

Run a meeting in Stage mode

Stage is meant for classes, presentations and events: whoever is on stage talks and is shown; the audience watches. A Stage meeting holds up to 100 people; in Everyone talks mode, the limit is 30.

In the audience, people see You are watching with the number of people in the audience, and the Raise hand button to ask to speak (and Lower hand to withdraw).

For the organizer, the Audience and stage strip shows how many people are watching and how many hands are raised:

• Bring on stage — invites the person to speak. They get the notice The organizer invited you to the stage and choose Enable microphone or Not now. Only the organizer decides who goes on stage; no one in the audience can turn on their microphone on their own.
• Return to audience — takes the person off the stage.
• Search participants — finds someone by name.
• Lock raised hands — when on, no one in the audience can raise their hand. Raised hands are lowered, the Raise hand button is disabled and, on hover, the audience sees The host locked raised hands. People who join later find the button already locked. Turn it off to allow raised hands again.

Follow the call in a floating window

During a call, use Open floating window in the control bar to keep watching the video while working on another screen. The button appears when your browser supports this feature and a video is available. To close it from SquadOS, use Close floating window.

The window shows one video at a time, in this order:

1. A screen shared by someone else, even if their microphone is muted.
2. The camera of someone speaking now, with their microphone on. If a speaker has no camera available, the window considers the other people speaking.
3. The camera of the last person who spoke, during pauses, while they remain in the call with a camera available.
4. Another available camera: another participant’s first, then yours if no other camera is available.

Muting the microphone after speaking does not remove that person from the window during silence. As soon as someone else speaks with a camera available, the window follows that person. If the last speaker turns off their camera or leaves, the window uses another available video. Your own screen share does not appear in the thumbnail.

This priority also applies to calls in internal rooms. If no video is available, the window closes.

After the meeting

Minutes live under Minutes (the Link meetings group), one row per call, searchable by meeting title or by the content of the minutes. Deleted meetings appear in the list’s Deleted group, on demand.

For internal rooms and direct messages, see Rooms and direct messages.