Getting Started

Getting Started with VideoFacilitator

If its your first time with VideoFacilitator, or you just want to refresh yourself on the basic principles of VideoFacilitator this page is for your.

VideoFacilitator is designed to allow participants to control how they engage in a virtual multiroom environment, while room owners and facilitators get to control what controls are available to participants.

If you prefer to watch a video to get started instead, check out our Guided Scenarios.

Getting Started

If you are just joining us you will need to Create a Room. You will receive an email with your room details and be able to jump in immediately to play around.

Creating a room does not automatically create a verified login in which to administer your room. This is done separately but is not required to actually use your room.

A verified login provides access to the admin dashboard where you are able to configure the controls available to your participants, and provide special permissions for named facilitators if you choose to.

Named facilitators will also need to create a verified login to be able to authenticate themselves and access any controls you may have allocated them.

If your participants want to join via mobile they can download the VideoFacilitator iOS App or the Android App.

You should check that your system setup is able to meet our minimum requirements.

If you are having trouble connecting to a VideoFacilitator call, it is likely that you communication is blocked on 443 for TCP.
In some corporate environments this port 443 is only made available for SSL preventing you from accessing a VideoFacilitator event. You will either need to disconnect from the corporate environment or ask your IT team to open port 443 for TCP communication.

Using VideoFacilitator

VideoFacilitator has two main areas in which users interact.

1. The viewing area where everything that is "in-the-room" occurs, such as raising a hand to speak and sharing your screen.

2. The room navigation area where participants can view the context of the rooms available and navigate between rooms.

By default all controls are available to all users, unless you restrict access via the admin dashboard.

Users can

• Edit the topic of the room they are in

• Indicate that their room needs help

• Create a rapid poll in a room, or across all rooms - asking a thumbs up, thumbs down question

• Broadcast a message to all rooms

• Set a timer on their room

• Swap the room they are in between standard mode (50 pax) and expanded mode (100 pax)*

• Set the number of breakout rooms that are available

• Set the room visibility for previously created rooms

• Return all participants to the lobby / plenary with a 30 second warning

• Create a shared link - associating it with the room they are in

• Add a password to the room they are in

• Lock the room their are in - which unlocks automatically when all participants leave the room

* If you use a standard room setup with more than 50 users you will experience drop outs and instability in your call.

A standard room supports up to 50 participants with 12 videos streaming at any one time (plus yourself).
An expanded room supports up to 100 participants with 2 videos stream at any one time (plus yourself).

If you experience drop outs earlier than 50 participants, swapping to an expanded room mode will increase the stability of the call.

Room Tips

Every room can have a shared link associated with it, connecting your room with any cloud based tool. This link will provide immediate context about what that room is working on, or the context of the session.

If you use a tool like google slides you can connect a single slide to each room, allowing you to capture the work outputs from every room in your event. This single document is the perfect artefact to take home and share at a later date with your participants.

You can also view the google slide document in "Grid view" and see realtime updates from every room at once during your session!

Facilitating a Session

Using the facilitation controls available and presetting up your rooms, is the magic sauce that will make your sessions really sing!

A main room's timer triggers a soft alert in all other rooms when expired allowing participants to choose if they are ready to come back.

On the rare occasion that you need to force everyone back, you can use the "return to lobby" control that forces the return of all participants to the main lobby / plenary with a 30-second warning.

All breakout room can also use timers, however these timers are used purely to manage time and trigger no special events.

Broadcast messaging can be used to communicate across all rooms and to lightly manage the activites that participants are working on, without needing to jump into each room a room.
For example "5 mins left, you should be starting to summarise your actions.".

Rapid polls can be used to quickly gain realtime feedback from an audience either in the room or across your entire event.
For example "Do we need a little more time?".

Precreating rooms and setting them up before a session can be a huge time saver, and by using the "Set room visibility" control you can rapidly move between sessions allowing you to focus more on facilitating and less on room setup.

If you happen to not have perfectly presetup your event beforehand, you can always create rooms just-in-time using all the standards functions available to you!

Enjoy yourself and let us know if you have any questions!