Live Video Interview Setup: Participants schedule their own meeting

This article will walk through how to configure the Calendar, Activity Access and Behavior, and Notifications for Live Video Interview Activities when participants will be scheduling their own meetings.

To learn about the Basic Settings and other customizations like points, prepared content, and client controls, please refer to the general Live Video Interview Setup article. 

Scheduling

To begin, select the Participants can schedule their own meeting scheduling option.

Next, configure the date and notifications:

Open Activity on: Indicates when participants will be able to access the Activity, and if enabled, when the invitation to schedule a meeting will be sent.

Live Video Interview Activities are available out of sequence, meaning participants will be able to access the Activity on the Open on date, regardless of where the Activity is positioned. You can further control the visibility of a Live Video Interviews Activity using segment limits.

Notifications:

• Invitation to schedule a meeting: When enabled, participants will be sent an email invitation to schedule their meeting. The Open activity on date controls when this invitation will be sent.
• Reminder to schedule a meeting: When enabled, participants will be sent a reminder to schedule a meeting if they have not scheduled one within 48 hours of the invitations going out. They will receive additional reminders every 48 hours until they have scheduled a meeting.

If these notification options are not enabled, participants will still be able to schedule their own meetings. If you are running a Live Video Interview-only study, we recommend keeping these notifications enabled. If the Live Video Interview Activity is just a portion of the study, and you plan to direct Participants to the Activity via a Prompt Task, Email Broadcast, or instructions on the Home Page, you may choose to disable the invitation to schedule a meeting. 

Calendar

This section allows you to configure the calendar in which participants will be selecting their interview time from. Each of the settings are explained in detail below:

1. The Meeting Duration: This allows you to determine the length of each interview time slot on the calendar. The meeting duration can be exceeded if necessary and is primarily for defining the frequency of interview slots or available start times. 
2. The Meeting Buffer: This allows you to determine a buffer between scheduled meetings. This buffer window can help to avoid situations where a host has multiple consecutive meetings in a row and allows meetings to exceed the allotted time without influencing additional meetings that are scheduled afterwards.
3. Time Slots: This allows you to control how time slots appear on the calendar. You can optimize for flexibility or predictability. Please note that you cannot change this setting after meetings have been scheduled.
   1. Flexible: Allows Live Video Interview activities to make use of a “flexible” calendar mode that allows for meetings to be scheduled on any 15-minute increment during available meeting times. For each host, this means meetings with a duration greater than 15 minutes will automatically “occupy” multiple time slots in this mode.
   2. Predictable: Time slots will be preset to match the Meeting Duration and will be spaced out by any Meeting Buffer that has been selected. Only time slots that fit within the Meeting Times will be shown.
4. Meeting Times: Allows you to define when meetings can be scheduled. Participants are shown a set of available meeting times and are then required to schedule their meeting themselves. For example, you can configure the meeting times so that participants are only able to schedule meetings from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM on specific days. These meetings are then evenly assigned to available hosts. It is important to note that you will not be able to modify the Meeting Start Time once meetings or Host Availability have been scheduled. However, you can extend the end time at any point if you need to account for meetings later than you had originally intended.
5. Host Availability: Determines whether hosts will start as available or unavailable by default. Hosts who start as available will be required to remove undesirable meeting times, while those who start as unavailable will be required to add desirable ones.

Activity Access

Activity Access settings allow you to define Participant Limits, control Participant Access (who can schedule a meeting), and customize Client Access options. Everyone will be invited to meet unless you limit who is invited under the Participant Access section. You can also set a maximum number of meetings by limiting the required number of participants.

• Selecting the Include pending participants option allows you to invite participants who have been added or invited to the study, but have not yet joined. If you are running a study that solely consists of Live Video Interviews, you can add your participants to the study and then invite them this way.
• You also have the ability to limit the number of participants who will be interviewed. While you can send out as many invites as needed, participants will be unable to book additional meetings once this limit is reached. Once you have reached capacity, it will automatically indicate to participants that additional meetings are no longer being scheduled. This limit can always be raised at any time if you would like to schedule additional meetings.
• Selecting the Only select segments option under Participant Access will allow you to limit the visibility or access of the Live Video Interview Activity to specific segment(s). This is particularly useful if you only want to invite a subset of your participants to schedule meetings.
• Selecting the Client Access option, as required, will allow you to limit the visibility or access of the Live Video Interview Activity to only specific clients or otherwise hide the Activity from all clients, if desired.

Activity Behavior

Activity Behavior settings allow you to configure additional features, such as limiting how far in advance meetings can be booked and controlling access to the backroom audio channel.

• You have the ability to require that meetings be booked a specific number of hours in advance so that you don't get any last-minute sign-ups that you may be unprepared for. This can be particularly useful if you need to do a significant amount of prep work before each meeting.
• If Start with participants cameras disabled selected, participants will join the meeting with their camera disabled until they enable the camera themselves.
  • When this option is selected, an additional sub-option of Do not allow participants to enable their camera appears below. When this sub-option is enabled, participants will be blocked from using their cameras during the meeting, but will still have access to their microphones in order to participate using audio in addition to utilizing the text-based chat feature.
• If Do not enable backroom audio and translator support is selected, the dedicated backroom audio channels for observers and translators will be disabled. Client observers may still join the Activity if they have been given permission to do so, but will have access to observe and access the backroom text-chat feature only.

Invitation

This section allows you to configure the Meeting Invitation that will be sent to participants, asking them to review available times and schedule a meeting.

You can enter a curly bracket ({) in order to select from a list of available dynamic values to include within the invitation. Dynamic values can be used to display information that is specific to each participant (e.g. first name, last name, username, etc.,), or to the Study or Activity (e.g. Study Name, Activity Name, Meeting Duration, etc.,). Dynamic values are most commonly used to address each participant on a more personal level by addressing them by name.

Notifications

This tab allows you to configure the additional notification settings for the Activity. You can enable/disable the following notifications:

• Meeting Scheduled: Participants will receive a confirmation email when they schedule a meeting. The content of this message can be customized by selecting 'Customize'. Admins will also receive a notification informing them that a meeting has been scheduled. 
• Meeting starting soon: Participants will receive two separate email notifications informing them that their scheduled meeting is starting soon. The first one will be sent two hours before the meeting starts, and the second one will be sent out 15 minutes before. Again, the content of this message can be customized by selecting 'Customize.' Hosts will receive a reminder 15 minutes before a scheduled meeting. If the admin joins the meeting first, they will receive a notification when the participant joins. If the participant joins first, the Host will be notified and will be prompted to join immediately. 
• Meeting missed: Participants will be notified if they miss a scheduled meeting and will be prompted to reschedule.
• Meeting rescheduled: Participants will be notified if their meeting is rescheduled.
• Meeting canceled: Participants will be notified if their meeting is cancelled by an admin.

For other setup information, such as how to configure custom points, add prepared content, and allow Clients to observe the meeting, please refer to our general Live Video Interviews Setup article. For information on configuring Live Video Interviews so that participants cannot schedule their own meetings, please refer to the Admins schedule all meetings Setup article.