Can You Make a Meeting Less Hassle?

Meetings. We all have them. We all hate spending time in them. But think of what it’s like for the meeting organizer! They have to book a conference room, find a projector, create an agenda, organize the participants… to call it a hassle is an understatement. It can take an entire afternoon of valuable work time to arrange a one-hour meeting. Clearly, that’s not the best use of time. And, of course, it’s difficult and sometimes expensive to have offsite workers come in.

            We all know that virtual meetings can be the solution to this. Well, some of it, anyway. Virtual meetings and teleconferencing can resolve the problems involved in bringing people to the same office, and if everyone is meeting virtually the organizer needn’t be concerned about finding a conference room or the like.

            Unfortunately, a virtual meeting can often be even harder to set up than a “real” meeting. The technical needs for a virtual meeting can seem insurmountable: every member must have a login for the virtual meeting software, might need a client installed, and must have a very reliable broadband connection. These requirements can present frustrating hurdles to a virtual meeting as each member tries to connect, drops off, reconnects, waits for other team members to connect… It frequently seems to be more trouble than it’s worth.

            SharePoint provides a simple solution to these problems and more. Meeting Workspaces are one of the most popular templates in SharePoint, and with good reason. Meeting Workspaces provide all of the advantages of virtual meetings – allowing team members to meet without having to travel to the meeting site and saving the organizer from having to worry about physical requirements.

            But Meeting Workspaces offer even more. SharePoint isn’t as needy as most virtual meeting software. The users don’t need a specialized client: a web browser will do. While a broadband connection is desirable, the networking needs are far lower – making the meeting more reliable. The users don’t need to constantly worry about being dropped off the connection or experiencing lag.

            But Meeting Workspaces offer a great deal more than just that. They provide a simple, easy-to-use format in which to organize agenda items. Supporting documents can readily be uploaded. Best of all, these don’t go away when the meeting is over – the Meeting Workspace remains available to be consulted later. This is especially useful when using the Meeting Workspace for a recurring meeting.

            The recurring meeting functionality of SharePoint’s Meeting Workspaces is one of its most useful abilities. Meetings can be set to occur daily, weekly, multiple times a week, bi-weekly, monthly, or a host of other options. While the meetings retain the same format, they have separate agendas and content. This is exceptionally convenient. The meeting organizer doesn’t have to create a new Workspace for each meeting. And with the collaborative value of SharePoint, it’s usually not even necessary for the organizer to populate the agenda – team members will do so themselves.

            SharePoint’s Meeting Workspace seems like a very simple tool. However, it is one of the most useful available, and offers considerable benefits over both traditional and virtual meetings. Try using it for your next meeting and you’ll quickly see the benefits!