Hosting a Group Event

15 minutes before the scheduled start of the chat, moderators can enter the chat. Click on ‘Live Events’ on the menu in your Control Panel and you should see the event highlighted in green in the table of planned and running events.

In the example above, there is a group and 121 event happening concurrently. Click on ‘join’ on the group event shown in the table, or on the large ‘Join Event’ button in the summary at the top. The latter is also displayed on the dashboard so it’s always within easy reach for moderators.

If you have invited colleagues to join from around the business, we suggest that you create a test event beforehand to test their login and to give them a brief overview of the platform. On the day, we recommend you all join a conference line together to make the group moderation easier.

On the participants’ side, any users who have arrived early and try to join the event will be taken to the Lobby area. The three buttons to the right of the control bar at the top of the moderator view show that ‘Lobby’ is highlighted. These buttons control where participants currently are. For the moment, leave it set to ‘Lobby’.

The Meeting Room is empty, as shown below. This gives you time to prepare a welcome.

Press the ‘Message’ button on the top control bar and type your welcome message to participants:

If you’re joined by other moderators, have them also send a welcome message or introduction if relevant – the more that’s in the room when participants arrive, the more they tend to feel comfortable joining in.

When you’re ready to open the event, press the ‘Meeting Room’ button on the control bar. The participants will be brought into the Meeting Room and and will see your welcome message(s)

Participants begin to ask questions:

The questions in grey are unanswered and, crucially, awaiting your moderation. No participants apart from the author will see these messages until you make them live or reply. Discuss with your colleagues who’s best placed to answer.

When you hover over the question you are provided with the following options:

Usually in a group chat you will click on ‘reply’, type your answer and this will be shared with all of the participants. Most of the questions and answers in a group event will be of interest to everyone. When you have completed your answer and have pressed ‘Send (to group)’ the question and answer appears together in the participants view, making it simple for participants to follow. When you do this, you will notice that the colour of the participant’s chat bubble changes to white, indicating that it is now visible to the whole group.

Alternatively you might need to whisper to a participant – this is a private message only to that participant in response to their question. A whispered answer has a distinctive yellow background to the moderator, but appears the same as normal messages to the participant.

It is possible to share web links through the chat, directing participants to web pages of interest.

Tips: If there is a sudden flurry of questions, remember to send a message to say thanks for all of your great questions, we’re working through them. Bear in mind that participants still see a steady flow of content as you answer the questions. Keep your eye on the time and ask participants to be thinking about their final questions ten minutes before the end of the event. Despite the events being timed, the event will continue to run (you might be mid-conversation and not want to stop)

You can finally close the event by saying thanks and goodbye to the group (using the ‘Message’ button on the control bar) and sending participants to the Exit Lobby by clicking on ‘Exit’ in the control bar.

GDPR and Personal Information

All moderators on the Meet & Engage platform should be aware of their responsibilities under GDPR with regard to the collection and handling of personally identifiable information.

Our group chat events are configured to prevent any message written by chat participants from being seen by other participants until a moderator either marks them as ‘Live’ or replies to them (which automatically marks them as ‘live’). If a message contains personal information, it shouldn’t be made live, and if responding to it the moderator should instead ‘whisper’ back.

The ‘flag’ button shown below (visible when hovering over each chat comment) should be used to indicate if a comment contains personally identifiable information; When a chat event has finished and the data within it is no longer needed, the event contents are anonymised or expunged. We use an algorithmic approach to do this, as well as double-checking manually, but clicking the ‘flag’ button helps us locate any comments that should be removed.