Nearly every meeting-day horror story begins the same way: the organiser left every setting on default and ran to the gate late. The options screen is not complex; it is a handful of choices that take one hiring cycle to teach and one hiring cycle to unlearn when set wrong. Walk it once, set it right, and reuse the pattern forever.
The lobby is not a formality
Who waits before being admitted? Three settings cover almost every scenario.
- Invites only, lobby on — client calls and anything where an unknown attendee is a real possibility.
- Organisation only — recurring internal meetings where a temporary +1 reads as a welcome rather than a problem.
Field note
Promote a second presenter before the call starts, not during. The moment the Wi-Fi drops mid-demo is exactly the wrong time to learn whether anyone else is allowed to drive.
Recording, with consent and a purpose
Recording is an ordinary feature now, which is exactly why etiquette collapsed around it. Three rules keep everyone comfortable:
- Say you are recording, every time, out loud.
- Name what happens to the file — where it will live and who can reach it. Vague archives become the wrong kind of “permanent record”.
- Share the playback only with people who were told it exists.
Fifteen seconds of options ahead of a call is cheaper than any post-mortem about what the recording did, who saw the bonus slide, or why a candidate heard the wrong conversation. The best time to fixed this habit was last quarter; the second best is today.
