Group Session Meeting Types are necessary when you're trying to bring together several clients that might not know each other in a different context. To create one, first travel to the Meeting Types screen, from the left-side menu. Once you’re there, you will see a new meeting button on the top-right side of the screen.
You will be prompted to choose a meeting type to create. For this article, we chose Group Sessions.
Setting Up the Information of a New Meeting Type
In the first section of your meeting type, you will have to go through the basic information that everyone should know about your meeting. Here is what you will have to do:
- Give your meeting a name;
- Add an internal description (visible to your team)
- Selecting a location or conferencing details
- Adding a public description (visible to your audience)
- Setting a custom link
- Selecting a color meeting.
Let’s go through all the steps together!
1. Giving Your Meeting a Name
As the first step in creating a meeting, this is where you give your meeting a scope and hint to your audience about what they should expect. Keep it short and sweet, but still descriptive. For example, we would use “ACE Meetings Success Call” this way, your client would know the company they are booking a call with, and what this call will be about.
2. Giving Your Meeting an Internal Description
This section is for you and your team only. Make sure to only add crucial information here, that you need at first glance when you share the link. This will not be displayed to your client, so you can add any abbreviations you’re familiar with within your company.
3. Selecting a Location for Your Meeting
Here, you will have to choose between one of your connected calendars, through our official integrations, add the address of your office, or paste any third-party link you might enjoy using. Your client will see this information when they book a call, as well as in the confirmation email they receive.
4. Giving Your Meeting a Public Description
This section is for your client. Here, you can add as much information as needed about the type of call, what people can expect from you and how they should prepare. Anything you would like them to know before booking the meeting can go here.
5. Setting a Custom Link for Your Meeting
Just like your name, this part should still be short and sweet, but descriptive (and even easy to remember). Make sure you (and your clients) remember this link easily.
6. Setting Your Meeting’s Colour
This section is for you and your team only. This is a visual way of distinguishing between all your meeting types.
Setting Up the Availability of a New Meeting Type
In the second section of your meeting type, you will have to go through the availability you want to give your meeting type. Here, you can answer the question: if my calendar was completely empty, when would I want people to book a call with me?
Here is what you will have to do:
- Decide the maximum number of participants for your meeting
- Decide the date range of your meeting
- Decide the length of your meeting
- Add your available times and days
- Set your meeting buffers, increments, and scheduling conditions
Let's go through them together!
1. Deciding the maximum number of participants for your meeting
In this section, you will be able to decide how many guests can join a Group Session with you. By default, this number is set to 10, but you can change it according to your needs.
2. Deciding the Date Range of Your Meeting
There are two main options in this section:
- # days/weeks/months in the future, where the meeting will automatically become unavailable once this time passes.
- Indefinitely into the future, which will keep the meeting available until you pause it or delete it.
3. Decide the Length of Your Meeting
Deciding the length of your call is a crucial part of any get-together. With ACE Meetings you can choose between 6 default values: 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes, 120 minutes.
3. Setting up Your Meeting’s Availability
Setting your meeting’s availability will let you decide the hours you want people to be able to book a meeting with you. In this section, you can choose the days you’re available, the hours, and what your preferred times are.
You can edit the timezone, the hours, and even delete an entire day off the schedule.
4. Setting up Your Meeting’s Buffers
Meeting buffers calculate how much time ACE should wait before you can book another meeting. For example, if you have a meeting that ends at 10 AM, and you have a 15-minute break before the next meeting can be booked (at 10:15 AM).
You can set them before and after a meeting with different values. For example, you can set a 5-minute buffer before a meeting, and a 10-minute buffer after a meeting.
5. Setting up Your Meeting’s Increments
Meeting increments means how many minutes should pass between each meeting that can be scheduled. For example, if you set it to 30 minutes (which is our default), you’ll see Meeting A at 10 AM, and Meeting B at 10:30 AM and so on throughout the hours you have set available
6. Setting up Your Meeting’s Scheduling Conditions
This section has two fields for you to fill in. Here is what they are:
- Invitees can't schedule within # hours, or the number of hours that will be unavailable to a client so you can avoid last-minute bookings!
- Maximum daily allowed events for this type of event, or how many meetings of this type people can book in a single day.
Setting Up the Meeting Type Questions
In the third section of your meeting type, you will have to choose the questions you want to add to your Meeting Type. Two questions are set as mandatory and cannot be removed by any user: name and email. After this, you will be able to add any of the following question type:
- Single-line answer;
- Multiple-line answer;
- Single-choice answer;
- Multiple-choice answer;
- Phone Number.
Setting Up the Meeting Type Questions
Check-in with your clients about your meetings to confirm, remind them about, or follow up after a meeting using ACE Meeting's automated notifications. This takes the stress off of you but still ensures that the conversation is constant.
We have four predefined question types, out of which two are mandatory:
- Email Confirmation, where your client will receive an email confirmation with links to create their own calendar event.
- Email Cancellation, where your client will receive an email confirmation of the canceled meeting.
- Email Reminders, where your client will receive an email reminder before a scheduled event.
- Email Follow-Up, where your client will receive an email follow-up after a scheduled event.
Setting Up the Confirmation of a New Meeting Type
In the fourth, and final, section of your meeting type, you will have to choose the confirmation screen of your meeting. You can either have clients stay on the same page, and offer them more information, or redirect them to a website page of your choosing.
Setting Up the Meeting Type Payment
Setting up payment is the final step when you create or edit a new meeting type. Here, 3 quick steps are needed:
- Select the account you want to be paid in. This is extremely relevant when you have several connections.
- Set the amount you want to collect and the currency in which you want this amount of money.
- Set your payment terms, as per your guidelines. Keep in mind that ACE Meetings will not refund any payments.
Sharing Your Meeting
In your Meeting Types menu, find your meeting in the list, and copy the link using the designated button and, from there, you’re ready to share it in an email, message, or anywhere you might need!