This week I was joined by members of our BlueJeans community for the second part of our Remote Work webinar series called “Hands on Training: Ins and Outs of BlueJeans”. Whether you are new to BlueJeans as you are settling into your new remote working reality, or just need a quick refresher, this webinar is intended to show you the basic tools available so that you can master video conferencing and be productive anywhere you work.

Watch the webinar recording here!

Getting Started with Your BlueJeans Meeting

The easiest steps you can take today before your first or your next BlueJeans meeting is to make sure you have a stable internet connection, look and sound your best with an optimal camera and headset setup, and download the BlueJeans app on your desktop or mobile devices. You and your participants can also use the webRTC version of BlueJeans with full-featured functionality – no downloads required!

Before, During and After your BlueJeans Meeting

When it comes to scheduling your meetings, whether you are using Outlook or Google in a Windows PC or a Mac, or whether you choose to do join through a browser, we offer some very simple ways to make scheduling easy. The easiest way is to download the calendar add-in so that you can easily add a BlueJeans meeting to your calendar invite. All you need to do is click on “Add BlueJeans Meeting” and all your meeting information is automatically added to the meeting invite.

BlueJeans’ simple, intuitive meeting controls let you have great meetings with ease and flexibility. The BlueJeans desktop and mobile app both have easy-to-use interfaces that make actions like muting participants, muting and unmuting your video, and sharing different types of content and applications a total breeze even for first time users.

We all know that when we work from home, background noise like dogs barking or children laughing (or crying) is very common. Thankfully, BlueJeans has provided options for moderators to mitigate these audio disruptions if a participant forgets to mute themselves. A moderator can mute all or individual participants by going into the people tab. Additionally, Dolby Voice audio, embedded into the BlueJeans Cloud, helps suppress any outside noise for maximum focus on the conversation.

After the meeting, you can go to your BlueJeans hub and access your meeting recordings, and if you have it enabled, binge-watch your Smart Meetings highlights. You can create recordings with multiple chapters to break down the meeting into different themes, simply by stopping and restarting recording. For example, if you’re using BlueJeans to take a class, chapters help you organize the full recording into different topics of the class so learners can find the topics for easy reference later.

There are some other helpful resources you can access today to learn more BlueJeans tips and tricks. Easily navigate the support page by asking questions and browsing the different sections like that have been made available such as getting started resources, remote working best practices and training tutorials.

I was very excited to see some great questions from a very engaged audience (summarized below):

1. How can we get calendar integration with Microsoft Outlook? How can you set up recurring meetings?

You can download the required add-ins from our download hub. It’s a quick installation process like any other application. You’ll see a “add BlueJeans Meeting” button after you open your application after installing the add-in. simply click on it, and your BlueJeans meeting will be added to the meeting invite. To set up a recurring meeting, just follow the same process as setting up any regular recurring meeting on Outlook or Google Calendar. The recurring meeting invite will also contain the same BlueJeans meeting info.

2. Is it easy to set up a breakout room during a call? What are the best practices?

[I shared my screen and walked through the process which you can watch in the recording.] On the apps tab, click breakout rooms. You can add multiple breakout rooms and then either assign participants randomly or pick who you want in each room. For best practices, while this is easy to do, I recommend trying it out once before you use it in a live meeting.

3. How do you save a whiteboard?

There are a couple of options. You can record your meeting and it will save the whiteboard (including the live drawing you’re creating!). You can also take a screenshot of the whiteboard during the call if you want to share it as an image.

4. Can a client who doesn’t have a BlueJeans account be a moderator?

In order to be a moderator, you need to have a BlueJeans profile first so you would need a BlueJeans account.

5. What kind of content can be shared? Can we share documents other than videos?

Yes! With BlueJeans you can share any app that’s running on your device. Simply click share, and it will show you which apps are available on the desktop to be shared. Simply click on the app – it can be PowerPoint, Word, or any program that you’re running on your device. This method also prevents others in the meeting from seeing any other apps you’re running and prevents any notifications that pop up from showing as well. If you need to, you can also share your whole screen which will show your entire desktop view.

6. What is a Meeting Highlight?

This is one of my favorite features! It’s a part of our Smart Meetings feature and it’s a way to capture a 40-second clip of the entire meeting recording to isolate the section that is important to your meeting. Rather than watching the whole recording, add a highlight and quickly find it later by commenting on the highlight, taking action items and tagging your coworkers.

The third webinar of this series “Rapid Deployment: Best Practices for BlueJeans Admins” is for IT leaders who are trying to quickly deploy BlueJeans in their environment. Watch the recap here!

We hope these resources help you get quickly up to speed on the basics of BlueJeans. As always, we are here to help you with any questions you may have. For more resources on remote work video conferencing, check out our video conferencing guide to remote work and come back to the BlueJeans Blog for more tips and tricks!