Set up Meet for distance learning

Your school or organization can use Google Meet for video class meetings.

  • If you use Classroom, students and teachers get a dedicated link to join video meetings. 
  • If you use Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals or Google Workspace for Education Plus, each video meeting is limited to 300 hours.

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Set up Meet

Step 1: Turn on Meet video calling

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 Appsand thenGoogle Workspaceand thenGoogle 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. (Optional) To turn a service on or off for an organizational unit:

    1. At the left, select the organizational unit.
    2. Select On or Off.
    3. Click Override to keep your setting if the service for the parent organizational unit is changed.
    4. If Overridden is already set for the organizational unit, 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 Appsand thenGoogle Workspaceand thenGoogle 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.
Step 2: Turn on live streaming

Recommended only for faculty and staff

You can put your teachers and students into separate organizational units and apply separate permissions to each organization. If you use Classroom, you can give access to your verified  Classroom Teachers group.

  1. From the Admin console Home page, go to Appsand thenGoogle Workspaceand thenGoogle 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

Step 3: Turn on meeting recording

Supported editions for this feature: Business Standard and Plus; Enterprise; Education Fundamentals*, Standard, Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Plus; Essentials.  Compare your edition

* Users with Education Fundamentals will have access to recordings as a temporary benefit through the end of 2021.

Recommended only for faculty and staff

You can put your teachers and students into separate organizational units and apply separate permissions to each organization. If you use Classroom, you can give access to your verified  Classroom Teachers group.

  1. From the Admin console Home page, go to Appsand thenGoogle Workspaceand thenGoogle 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 Recording.
  5. Check the Let people record their meetings box.
  6. Click Save.

Related topics

View the Meet features available to a user or group
  1. From the Admin console Home page, go to Appsand thenGoogle Workspaceand thenGoogle 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

Protect video meeting quality
  • To ensure teachers or students don't share accounts, provision one 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

New Meet features to support distance learning

Get attendance reports for moderators
Track who attends your classes with Google Meet Attendance reports.
Use Meet with Google Classroom

Meet must be turned on for the primary teacher in the class. 

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.

Related topics

Start and join video meetings in Gmail
For Education edition 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.
Control access to video meetings
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.
  • Participants who were invited to the video meeting in Google Calendar can join without asking.
  • 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.

Quick access is turned on by default. After you start a video meeting, you can change the setting as often as you need.

Tip: If you turn Quick access on or off in recurring meetings or meetings that re-use the same meeting code, the setting will be saved for future meetings. If you turn Quick access on or off in a one-time, nicknamed, or instant meeting, the setting will return to on after the meeting ends. 

Related topics

Moderation controls for teachers
As the meeting creator or meeting calendar owner, only the teacher can:
  • Mute or remove participants. If a teacher removes a participant, they can't request to rejoin the video meeting. The teacher must invite them back into the meeting.
  • See, approve, and deny external requests to join the meeting. Guests from inside or outside of your domain can't request to join a video meeting if they've already been denied entry twice.
  • Prevent participants from: 
    • Sharing their screen during the meeting
    • Sending chat messages during the meeting

Tip: If you turn presentations or chat off in recurring meetings or meetings that use the same meeting code, the setting will be saved for the next scheduled meeting. If you turn presentations or chat off in a one-time, nicknamed, or instant meeting, the setting will turn on after the meeting ends.

Related topics:

End a meeting and keep students from rejoining
Meeting organizers and moderators on a computer can end the meeting for everyone on a video call. End meeting for all ends the meeting and automatically removes all participants from the meeting, even mobile users, so you don’t have to remove participants manually.

Train teachers and students to use Meet

View support and training resources
Share these resources to help your educators and students learn how to use Meet.
View tips for teachers
  • 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

FAQ

How long are the premium Google Meet features available to Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals customers?
The promotion for free access to larger meetings and live streaming ended September 30, 2020. To use these features after the promotion, upgrade your Education edition. The promotion for free meeting recordings is being extended until a new temporary recordings feature launches later in 2020. Temporary recordings will let any meeting host record and share a meeting within their domain for 30 days. 
What are the system requirements for using Google Meet? Can I turn on Google Meet but disable chat in classic Hangouts?

Yes. You can turn on Meet, but disable classic Hangouts by turning on the Meet service and setting the Google Chat and classic Hangouts service to Chat only or Both turned off.

Can I add Google Meet video meetings from Outlook?
Yes. For more information, go to Add Meet video meetings to Outlook.
Can people that use other video conferencing tools join Google Meet video calls?
Yes. For more information, go to Use Meet with 3rd-party video hardware systems.
What if I’m a current Google Workspace for Education Plus edition customer?
If you purchased Google Workspace for Education Plus edition for your entire organization, assign faculty licenses to the users that you want to have access to features such as recording or live streaming and turn on those features in the Google Admin console. 
Who can approve external requests to join a meeting? 

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.
Why can't users join some meetings?
If you have an Education edition account and your school type is Primary/Secondary education (K-12), you will not be allowed to join Google Meet video calls created by personal Google Accounts.
Anonymous users, or users not signed in to a Google Account, will not be able to join meetings organized by Google Workspace for Education users. However, users can still dial in using a phone.
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