How to join and participate in your Group Online Appointment (for Practitioners)

💡 The following instructions assume that you’ve enabled Online Appointments for Groups for at least one practitioner, and have an online session booked with your clients. If not, start by reading the Online Appointments for Groups guide.

To get the most out of your Group Online Appointment, we recommend using:

• Chrome on a desktop computer or laptop.
• Default browsers (Chrome for Android devices and Safari for iOS devices) on a mobile device.

When it comes time to join your clients for a group video call, like a couples or family therapy session, find the appointment in your Schedule or Day Sheet, and click on it to open up the Appointment panel.

At the top of the panel, you’ll find a button to Begin the online appointment — when you click this, the session will open in a separate window. The Begin button will be available 1 hour before the session starts and will disappear 1 hour after the session ends.

If your client has entered the appointment before you, there will be a green badge on the appointment that says ‘Client is Waiting’.

When your client joins the call, they will enter a private waiting area. They’ll see a message confirming their appointment details and letting them know their practitioner will begin the call shortly.

If your clients have already joined the call when you click Begin, you’ll be able to hit Admit when you are ready to start the call. If you join the call before your clients, you’ll hear a chime 🔔 once they have joined, and the Admit button will turn blue.

Once your clients have joined the call, you’ll have the ability to manage a few of your settings by clicking the three horizontal dots beside their name:

• Remove from Call: Click here if any clients are no longer needed in the session.
• Mute: Helpful for moments when you need to mute sounds or if a client has a lot of background noise that is disrupting the call.
• Start/Stop Video: This setting is only available for practitioners and gives you the ability to turn on your client’s video. It’s a safety-oriented feature, typically reserved for clients in crisis.

You’ll also see a row of icons at the bottom of the screen. Let’s take a look at what each of them does.

From left to right:

• Mute/Unmute - Great for those moments when you need to mute sounds during the call. You can also click on the arrow next to the microphone icon to choose which speaker and microphone you’d like to use for the call.
• Start video - Click here to turn your camera on or off.
  • Once you’ve started your video you can click on the drop-down arrow to access a couple more features:
    • Self View: Optionally hide your Self View and you’ll no longer see the video of yourself, even though others in the meeting can.
    • Background: Optionally blur your background for added privacy and professionalism.

• Raise Hand / Lower Hand - Click this to politely let your client know that you want to speak. A yellow hand icon will appear above your toolbar and in the corner of your video. Click the Hand icon again to lower your hand.
• Participants - This button will open up the Participants Panel on the left of the screen, where you can see a list of clients on the call and any clients in the Waiting Room.
• Chat - Use this to send messages or share links with your client. Only clients who are admitted to the call can see messages, and messages are deleted when the call ends.
• Share Screen - A picture is worth a thousand words and sharing your screen with your client helps share that information easier! (💡 Screen share is not available on mobile.)
  • After clicking the Share Screen button, a pop-up will open where you can choose whether you’d like to share a tab or a window you have open in your web browser, or your entire screen.
  • At the bottom of this pop-up, you can check or uncheck the Share Audio box. You’ll want to check this box if you want to share sound for a video, for example.

• Gallery/Speaker View - Speaker View will expand the video of the current speaker, while Gallery View displays the participants in a grid on the same screen. (💡Gallery View is not supported in Firefox, Safari, or mobile devices)
• End Call - When you’re finished with your call, click here or simply close the tab.

If you end the call by accident, not to worry, you can easily Rejoin the call and reconnect with your client.

And that’s all there is to it! If you run into any issues check out our troubleshooting guide or get in touch with one of our lovely team members.