Set up Meet for distance learning

When the Google Meet service is on, users can join video meetings in your organization. You can also let users create video meetings.

Note: You can still use other video conferencing services when Meet is turned on. 

Allow users to join video meetings

To allow users to join video meetings in your organization, turn on the Google Meet service.

1. Sign in to your Google Admin console.

   Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).

2. From the Admin console Home page, go to AppsG SuiteGoogle Meet.
3. Next to Service status, click the Down arrow .

4. To turn on or off a service for everyone in your organization, click On for everyone or Off for everyone, and then click Save.

   
   Note: This enables or disables Meet for both staff and students.

5. To turn on or off a service only for users in an organizational unit:

   1. At the left, select the organizational unit.
   2. Select On or Off.
   3. To keep the service turned on or off even when the service is turned on or off for the parent organizational unit, click Override.
   4. If the organization's status is already Overridden, choose an option:
      • Inherit—Reverts to the same setting as its parent.
      • Save—Saves your new setting (even if the parent setting changes).

   Learn more about organizational structure.

6. To turn on a service for a set of users across or within organizational units, select an access group. For details, go to turn on a service for a group.
7. Click Save.

Allow users to create new video meetings

To let users create new video meetings, turn on the Video calling setting with the Google Meet settings:

1. From the Admin console Home page, go to AppsG SuiteGoogle Meet.

2. Click Meet video settings.

3. To apply the setting to everyone, leave the top organizational unit selected. Otherwise, select a child organizational unit or a configuration group.

   • Recommended: Only select organizational units that contain faculty and staff. If you use Classroom and have verified teachers, you can select your Classroom Teachers group.

4. Click Video calling.
5. Check the Let users place video and voice calls box.
6. Click Save.

You can also update other video meeting access, such as joining a meeting by phone. Learn more

Changes typically take effect in minutes, but can take up to 24 hours. For details, go to How changes propagate to Google services.

1. From the Admin console Home page, go to AppsG SuiteGoogle Meet.
2. Click Meet video settings.
3. To apply the setting to everyone, leave the top organizational unit selected. Otherwise, select a child organizational unit or a configuration group.
4. Click Stream.
5. Check the Let people stream their meetings box.
6. Click Save.

Related topics

• Add an organizational unit
• Verify teachers and set permissions 

1. From the Admin console Home page, go to AppsG SuiteGoogle Meet.
2. Click the Meet video settings section to expand it.
   The Meet settings page shows the features that are turned on or off for that user, group, or organizational unit.
3. On the left, select an option.
   • To search by username, click Users and search for the username. Meet settings can’t be changed for an individual user. Instead, add them to an organizational unit or a group that has the correct Meet settings.
   • To search by group, click Groups and search for the group name or email address. To turn a Meet feature on or off for that group, click a setting name, change the setting, and click Override.
   • To search by organizational unit, click Organizational Units and select or search for an organizational unit. To turn a Meet feature on or off for that organizational unit, click a setting name, change the setting and click Override.

Changes typically take effect in minutes, but can take up to 24 hours. For details, go to How changes propagate to Google services.

Related topics

• View the apps enabled for a user
• View a user's group memberships
• Apply policies to different users
• Customize service settings with configuration groups
• Google Meet settings reference for admins

• To ensure teachers or students don't share accounts, provision one G Suite account for each user. Learn more
• To limit Meet bandwidth, set the default video quality in the Google Admin console. ​Learn more
• To understand Meet usage and troubleshoot issues, use the Meet Quality tool and Google Meet activity logs. Learn more
• If Meet is unavailable or you experience performance issues, use the Meet troubleshooting guide. Learn more

In Classroom, teachers can create a unique Meet link for each class, making it easy for teachers and students to join class video meetings. Only teachers can create the Meet link. All Meet links created in Classroom are nicknamed links, which help teachers manage participants.

For G Suite for Education users to use Meet in Gmail, you must turn on permissions to create and join video meetings. For details, go to Turn on Meet video calling.

As the meeting organizer, teachers can decide if participants must ask to join the video meeting.

By default, Quick access is turned on. After the teacher starts a video meeting, they can change the setting as often as they need using Meet on a computer.

When Quick access is on:	When Quick access is off:
Participants from your domain can automatically join the meeting using their computer or mobile device. Participants who dial in to the meeting using their phone can automatically join the meeting. Any participant can dial out of the meeting.	All participants from inside and outside of your domain must ask to join the meeting. This includes people who dial in to the meeting by phone. People who are invited during the meeting by someone other than the teacher must ask to join the meeting. Only the teacher can dial out of the meeting.

Important: If students can create video meetings and they join the meeting before the teacher, they become the meeting organizer and can turn Quick access on or off.

Related topics

• Control access to a video meeting
• Add people to a video meeting by phone

As the meeting creator or meeting calendar owner, only the teacher can:

With nicknamed meetings, if the teacher or meeting creator leaves the meeting last, students can't rejoin. For details, go to Prevent students from rejoining a meeting.

Share these resources to help your educators and students learn how to use Meet.

• To improve video meeting quality, participants can turn off their camera and show their profile photo instead.
• If audio quality is poor, use a phone for audio instead. Learn more
• For large classes, create a live stream event instead of having students join an interactive video class meeting. Learn more
• Record a lesson and share it later. Learn more
• To engage students watching a live stream or recorded meeting, you can accept and present questions in Google Slides. Learn more
• To help students who are deaf or hard of hearing, turn on live captions in Meet. Learn more
• Review best practices for distance learning using Meet. Learn more

Update on free premium Meet features—The promotion for free access to larger meetings and live streaming ends September 30, 2020. To continue using these features, upgrade to G Suite Enterprise for Education. The promotion for free meeting recordings is being extended until a new temporary recordings feature launches later this year. Temporary recordings will let any meeting host record and share a meeting within their domain for 30 days. 

Local non-US dial-in numbers for meetings are not included in this program. G Suite for Education customers continue to have access to US dial-in phone numbers.

For details, go to Requirements for using Google Meet.

No. For more information, go to Block Google Hangouts and Google Chat on school-managed Chromebooks.

Yes. For more information, go to Add Meet video meetings to Outlook.

Yes. For more information, go to Use Meet with 3rd-party video hardware systems.

If you purchased G Suite Enterprise for Education for your entire organization, assign faculty licenses to the users that you want to have access to the premium features and turn on those features in the Google Admin console. 

If you purchased G Suite Enterprise for Education for a subset of your organization, all users without Enterprise licenses will have access to the premium features through September 30, 2020, but you’ll still need to turn them on for specific organizational units in the Admin console.

Only the meeting creator or calendar owner can approve requests to join a meeting by video from outside of your domain. External guests can’t request to join a video meeting if they’ve already been denied entry twice.

If the meeting creator needs to leave before the meeting ends, they should first approve any requests they want to allow. During a meeting, no other participants can see or approve external requests.

The meeting creator can’t:

• Allow external guests to join a meeting in progress automatically.
• Allow others to accept requests from external participants to join a meeting.

If you have a G Suite for Education account and your school type is Primary/Secondary education (K-12), you'll not be allowed to join Google Meet video calls created by non-G Suite, or personal, Google Accounts.

Anonymous users, or users not signed in to a Google Account, will not be able to join meetings organized by G Suite for Education users. However, users can still dial in using a phone. To allow anonymous users to join meetings in their domain, the admin of the G Suite for Education domain can contact G Suite support and request an exception. This exception also allows participants using interoperability services, like Pexip, to join meetings. Learn about known issues with Google Meet.