The controls run along the bottom of the call window. Which ones appear depends on the size you are in; theatre has everything.
Audio
Mute is the one everybody already knows.
Noise suppression is the one worth turning on once and forgetting about. It filters background noise out of your microphone: keyboards, air conditioning, the cafe, traffic. It runs on your own machine rather than in the cloud, and it is the single largest improvement available to how you sound to other people.
Not every browser supports it. Where it is unavailable the control is not offered rather than sitting there doing nothing.
Video
Camera on and off.
Background blur blurs behind you. It requires the camera to be on, which sounds obvious and is precisely why the control appears unresponsive when it is off. If nothing happens when you press it, turn the camera on first.
Blur costs some processing on your machine. On an older laptop in a long call, turning it off is a real and immediate improvement to everything else.
Screen share
Share your screen from the same row of controls.
Two things happen that are worth knowing.
Your presence becomes Presenting, visible to colleagues throughout the platform, so people can see why you are not answering messages.
Presenting cannot be set manually. It only ever comes from actually sharing, which is exactly what makes it trustworthy: nobody can claim to be presenting in order to be left alone.
Switch to theatre when you share, or when somebody else does. A shared screen in the mini window is not readable by anybody, including you.
Raise hand
Puts a marker on your tile that everybody can see.
Genuinely useful past about five people, where interrupting to say that you would like to speak is itself the problem being solved. Below five, just talk.
Reactions
Emoji that float up from your tile and fade.
They are ephemeral by design. Nothing is stored, nothing appears in a log, and they are gone within a second or two. This is the mechanism for agreeing without interrupting, which in a call of eight people is worth a great deal and costs nothing.
Pinning somebody
Pin a participant to keep them in view regardless of who is currently speaking.
The case is a call where one person is demonstrating something and somebody else keeps talking over them. Pin the person demonstrating and the view stops jumping.
In-call chat
Available in theatre. For links, spellings, and anything nobody should have to transcribe by ear.
Names, email addresses, URLs and account numbers belong here rather than being read out twice and still written down wrong.
Inviting somebody mid-call
Anybody can be pulled into a live call from the call window.
This is the closest thing here to a genuine superpower and it is badly underused. The moment a call reaches "we need to ask Priya about this" is the moment to add Priya, rather than scheduling a second meeting whose first ten minutes will repeat the first one.
Leaving, and ending
Leave removes you. The call continues for everybody else.
End for all finishes it, and is available to whoever is running it.
Leaving a call you started does not end it, which is correct behaviour and occasionally surprising the first time.
Connection quality
Each participant shows a connection indicator, and it is the most practically useful thing on the tile.
When somebody is hard to follow, the indicator tells you which problem you have. A poor connection is fixed by them turning off video. Someone who is simply unclear is not, and asking them to turn their camera off will not help.
If your own indicator is poor, the order of things to drop is: background blur, then your camera, then screen sharing. Audio is the last thing to sacrifice because it is the only part that is genuinely required.
Which mode for which moment
Mini while you work alongside the call. A one-to-one about something you are looking at in the platform is the case this exists for.
Expanded when you need to see who is present and who is speaking, and there is nothing being shared.
Theatre the moment anything is shared, and for any call above about five people, where the tile grid becomes the point rather than a distraction.
Switching costs nothing and does not interrupt anything, so switch freely rather than tolerating the wrong one.
Etiquette that actually matters
Announce a recording, even though the recorder is visible.
Do not share your whole screen when a single window will do. Notifications arrive at the worst possible moment and everybody has a story about it.
Use chat for anything that has to be written down correctly. Reading a URL aloud twice is slower than typing it once and still ends in somebody typing it wrong.
End the call rather than letting it trail. A call that nobody leaves for five minutes after it finished is five minutes nobody spends on anything.
What is not here
No recording by default. A call is not captured unless Scribe is on it, and the header says so when it is.
No dial-out. This reaches colleagues, not phone numbers. External calling lives in Comms HQ with its own telephony.
No waiting room. A call rings the people you chose; an open room admits anybody with access. There is no third state where somebody knocks.
No persistent chat. In-call chat lives for the call. Anything worth keeping should be posted in the room the conversation belongs to.
Two habits
Mute by default in anything above four people. This is not politeness. An unmuted room of eight is a room where nobody can hear whoever is actually talking, and the person suffering most is the one trying to explain something.
Turn on noise suppression once. It persists, and it is the cheapest improvement to how you come across that this product offers.
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