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 AppsGoogle WorkspaceGoogle 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 AppsGoogle WorkspaceGoogle 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 AppsGoogle WorkspaceGoogle 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 

Supported editions for this feature: Business Standard and Plus; Enterprise; Education* and Enterprise for Education; Essentials.  Compare your edition

* Education edition customers can continue recording meetings until temporary recordings become available in 2021. Temporary recordings will let Education customers record a meeting and share the recording within their organization for up to 30 days before the recording expires.

1. From the Admin console Home page, go to AppsGoogle WorkspaceGoogle 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 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

Track who attends your classes with Google Meet Attendance reports.

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 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.

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.

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

The promotion for free access to larger meetings and live streaming ended September 30, 2020. To use these features after the promotion, upgrade to Enterprise for 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. 

For details, go to Requirements for using Google Meet.

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.

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 Enterprise for Education 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. 

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 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 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 Google Workspace support and request an exception.