FAQs
Riff Remote
Riff Remote — what did I just sign up for?
Riff Remote is an instance of the Riff Video chat application that can be adopted directly from the Riff Website. There are two editions: Basic and Business. The Basic edition gives access to a private room for video meetings of up to 4 people; the Business edition provides teams, projects and organizations with multiple video meeting rooms and aggregate analytics across teams and over time.
How does Riff Remote differ from Riff’s other platforms and products?
Riff Remote standardizes the Riff Video chat feature set to make it easy to use and applicable across many remote learning and work scenarios. If you’re interested in finding out more about our education platform (Riff EDU) and customized corporate solutions, contact the Riff team at info@riffanalytics.ai
What does Riff Remote do that other video platforms don’t?
Riff Remote gives real-time and post-meeting feedback about how people interact in video meetings. This feedback has been proven to help teams perform more effectively. Riff also provides basic video conferencing capabilities, such as text chat and screen sharing, as well as a unique feature that allows teams to work together on simulations, games, documents or other Web-based resources during meetings.
Is there any documentation for the features?
The Riff user experience is designed to minimize the amount of training and documentation needed to get started. However, we do provide some details about the functionality of the platform on the Riff Remote Features.
What are the system requirements?
A modern desktop or laptop computer with the following features. (Other devices are not supported.)
- The Windows or iOS operating system.
- The latest version of Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. (We strongly recommend that you use Chrome.)
- An enabled camera and microphone.
An internet connection with a minimum speed of 3 mbps for both upload and download (10 mbps is recommended).
Getting Started
How do I start a Riff video meeting?
If you are using the Basic edition, go to my.riffremote.com to sign up and then sign in. Once you sign in, you will be directed to the Lobby, where you simply enter your first name and click Join Room. If you want to host a meeting, click 'Host a Meeting' in the top bar. From here, enter your name and a meeting title, then click 'Get Invite Link' for a link you can send to others. Then, when you have your link copied, click 'Host Meeting'.
If you are using the Business edition, you have created or been given a custom URL to use. Again, once you sign up and then sign in, you will be directed to the Lobby page. Enter a room name and your first name in the respective fields and click Join Room.
How do I invite others to my Riff video meeting?
In the Riff Lobby, click the Get Invite Link button to generate a link to send to others who you want in the meeting. People joining the meeting will be asked to sign up and sign in to the Riff platform before they are able to join the meeting.
What happens at the end of a Riff video meeting?
At the end of the Riff video meeting, click Leave Room and wait a moment while the real-time metrics load on the page. These metrics show what happened in the meeting you just completed, as well as showing a history of all the meetings you've ever had on the platform. If you simply close the tab or the browser window, you will not see the metrics.
Troubleshooting
Limiting the Number of Participants
The Riff Remote Basic Edition is optimized for use with up to 4 people. We do not prevent you from adding more participants. BUT, when more than 4 people join the video meeting, voice and video quality will significantly degrade.
Using the Right Browser and Equipment
Riff Remote is supported on Chrome, Firefox and Safari (for some installations) for use on a laptop or desktop computer. You may find that you can connect to a Riff video call from your phone, but you won’t be able to see other participants or the real-time feedback in the meeting.
You don’t need to install anything, but you do need to make sure your browser is allowed to access the video camera and microphone, for which you'll see a test display on the left. You may be prompted to allow such access when you first come to the site:
Once you enable the microphone and camera, you’ll see this page:
(In some cases, you might need to explicitly enable mic and camera. There are slightly different ways to enable them depending on the browser and settings.)
What You Should Expect to See
Once you’re in a call, you’ll see the video feeds of all participants in the meeting. You may occasionally get lower quality feeds because the internet connection between you and the other person is relatively weak. If your video quality become too degraded or unstable, click Leave Room and re-enter the meeting.
Interpreting the Meeting Mediator
During the meeting, you'll see real-time feedback via the "meeting mediator", which is the hub-spoke display in the lower left corner of the screen:
If you hover over the central node or any of the outer nodes, you’ll see the turn counts of all the participants during the last 5 minutes of the meeting. You’ll see metrics for the whole meeting once the meeting is over and you leave the room.
You can learn more about the Riff Metrics here.
Enabling the Shared Document
ou may also see the team exercise (or a shared document or a Web page URL) embedded in the video conference, occupying the right part of the screen. For some set ups, this is on by default when you enter the room; in other set ups, you need to enable it yourself and enter the URL of a shared document.
If you want to turn that off, click the button immediately under your own video:
Reviewing the Post Meeting Metrics
After the meeting, you'll see post-meeting metrics appear a few seconds after you leave the meeting; once you have had more than one meeting, you'll see a history of your meetings displayed on that page, too:
You can learn more about the Riff Metrics here.
Metrics Explained
Riff Video
Riff Video is a video chat platform that measures conversational dynamics, and reports on the communication patterns of a team.
A Riff video meeting with the Meeting Mediator (left), a real-time intervention tool that shows the conversational balance of participants.
Meeting Mediator
The meeting mediator measures the most recent five minutes of a conversation. When the center ball is closer to a participant node, it indicates that the participant has spoken more than others in the group. The thickness of the line also indicates conversational dominance, and acts as a secondary measurement.
An additional metric of conversational energy (the amount of times participants take turns) is indicated by the color of the central node. Darker purple represents more turn taking, and a more dynamic exchange of ideas. A lighter shade represents fewer turns between participants.
Riff Dashboard
After a video call is over, the dashboard of conversation metrics appears, which includes references to all your meetings over time, a timeline of the speaking moments of the most recent meeting, and metrics for influence, interruptions, affirmations, and dominance (speaking time).
Meetings metrics (speaking time, influences, interruptions and affirmations)
Speaking Time
Speaking time shows a breakdown of how long each member of your meeting spoke for. More equal speaking time across all members is associated with higher creativity, more trust between group members, and better brainstorming.
Influence
The influence graphs indicate how many times a person spoke first after another person finished speaking. Frequent first-responses indicate engagement in what the person said. However, in some cases, you might notice patterns of influence that indicate bias for or against other people in the conversation.
Affirmations and Interruptions
Affirmations and interruptions represent two types of conversational patterns — one shows a person giving a small interjection when someone else is talking (affirmation) and the other shows a person either successfully or unsuccessfully interrupting a person’s conversational turn (interruption).
These patterns are shown as raw counts relative to other meeting participants in stacked bar charts. And as discrete events in the timeline (below).
Timeline
The timeline of when people spoke during a meeting show not only each “utterance” for all the participants, but also all the interruptions, affirmations, and influenced responses that happened throughout the meeting.
