Meetings bring voice, video, screen sharing, and shared work into the part of Visual Space where a conversation is already happening. An activity or direct-message conversation provides the room, while the surrounding workspace stays available before, during, and after the call.

Continuity is the defining idea. Joining does not make the meeting a separate destination that takes over your work. You can open the full meeting stage when you want everyone in view, then return to an activity, document, or conversation without hanging up. For a practical introduction, see Start and join meetings.

Rooms And Presence

Each activity has one active meeting room. The first person starts it and later participants join that same room, subject to the activity's access. Direct-message conversations have their own private room for conversation members. Because rooms belong to their activity or conversation, a space can have several active meetings at once in different activities.

Meeting presence helps people discover a call without opening the stage first:

Participants can also invite eligible people who are not already present. An incoming invitation can be dismissed or accepted with Join meeting; it does not replace the normal access rules of the activity or conversation. Learn how rooms appear and remain current in Meeting rooms and presence.

The Stage Keeps Its Context

The stage is the focused view of a meeting, but it sits over the workspace you were using. Closing the stage returns you to that context while the call continues. Once you have opened the stage, leaving it can show a draggable picture-in-picture preview with essential controls and the selected feed. The preview can reopen the stage or collapse toward the edge when you need more space.

Picture-in-picture keeps the selected meeting feed and essential controls beside the workspace.

The stage arranges feeds, which are broader than participant tiles. A participant may contribute a camera feed, an audio-only feed, and a separate screen share. Shared live apps are feeds too. This makes it possible to choose the content that matters without losing the rest of the room.

Grid keeps the room’s available feeds together while the meeting actions and call controls stay within reach.

Several people can share their screens at the same time, and each share remains independently selectable. Visual Space remembers the selected feed and layout when you reopen the meeting, so returning to the stage does not mean rebuilding your view. Stage and layouts explains these choices in more detail, while Keep working during a meeting focuses on workspace and picture-in-picture continuity.

Media Controls And Connection

Core call controls stay reachable from the stage and picture-in-picture view. You can mute or unmute, turn the camera on or off, start or replace a screen share, and hang up. Available microphones, speakers, cameras, and desktop sharing sources can be chosen when you need to change equipment or present a different window.

Secondary actions move to the space that best fits the screen: desktop meetings use a meeting action rail, while smaller screens collect more actions in an options drawer. This keeps device and hang-up controls prominent without hiding reactions, raised hands, invitations, or live apps.

The connection indicator distinguishes a healthy call from a degraded or reconnecting one and can show connection quality and recent ping information. When a connection drops, the stage explains that recovery is in progress. If the call cannot recover in time, Visual Space closes the failed meeting view instead of leaving you in a stage that only appears connected. See Media and call controls for the full control and recovery picture.

Participation And Room Management

Meetings support lightweight ways to take part without interrupting the speaker. Reactions appear briefly across the stage and can include custom emoji configured for the space. A raised hand stays visible in an ordered queue until it is lowered or expires, which gives the room a simple way to manage turns.

In an activity meeting, an eligible participant can give an Award to another current participant. Awards create a larger, longer celebration than reactions and cannot be given to yourself. They are not available in direct-message meetings.

Invitations help bring in eligible space or conversation members, while room management handles problems after people arrive. In activity meetings, the space owner and members with chat-management permission can mute another participant or remove them from the room. This role-based room management does not apply to direct-message calls. Participation and room management brings these interaction and access boundaries together.

Shared Work Through Live Apps

Activity meetings can turn supported Visual Space work into a selectable meeting feed. Open Live Apps to browse existing work or create a supported draft, then bring it onto the stage like a camera or screen share. The available app types are:

The activity meeting launcher gathers the six supported app families before shared work is selected.

Existing work keeps its normal access rules. Creating some collaborative work requires Coordinator or app access, and the launcher explains when that access is unavailable. An active live app can be selected in grid, stage, or focus layouts, while its own title and tools remain available around the meeting. Ending the live app removes it from everyone's stage; any live apps still open end with the meeting.

Live apps are available in activity meetings, not direct-message calls. See Live apps for the supported workspaces, access decisions, and shared ending behavior.

Boundaries To Know

Meetings are currently ad-hoc: they do not include scheduling, reminders, public invitation links, or recording. Each activity or direct-message conversation has one active room, but different activities can host meetings in parallel.

You can join only one meeting at a time. Moving to another room replaces your current call. When switching between activity meetings, Visual Space keeps the current call until the replacement connects, which helps avoid dropping a working call because a new join failed. Direct-message calls leave the current room before connecting to the next one.

After you hang up, Visual Space may ask for a quick quality rating. You can submit a score, add issue details and a comment, retry after an error, or dismiss the prompt. This feedback is about call quality and is separate from the shared activity or conversation.

Common Questions

Can a space have more than one meeting at once?

Yes. Different activities can each have an active meeting, even though each individual activity has only one active room.

Can I stay in a call while reading or editing elsewhere?

Yes. Close the stage without hanging up to return to the surrounding workspace. After you have opened the stage once, picture-in-picture can keep the selected feed and essential controls nearby.

Are direct-message meetings the same as activity meetings?

They share the core stage, media controls, screen sharing, reactions, raised hands, invitations, and feedback. Direct-message calls return to Messages, and they do not include live apps, activity Awards, or space-role room management.

Who can enter a meeting?

A person needs access to the room's context: the relevant space and activity area for an activity meeting, or membership in the direct-message conversation. An invitation helps an eligible person find the call but does not grant broader access.

What happens if my connection becomes unstable?

The stage shows when the call is degraded or reconnecting and attempts to recover it. If recovery times out, the failed meeting closes and an alert explains the problem.

Can I schedule or record a meeting?

No. Current meetings are started as needed and do not provide scheduling, reminders, public invite links, or recording.