Features
Riff Account
Sign-up and Sign-in
In order to use Riff Remote, everyone on your site (or on the Riff Remote Basic site) must create an account. Accounts are simple and only require a display name, an email address and a password. Once you sign up, you can change your display name and password at any time by going into your Profile.
Profile Settings
Your profile contains your email address, which is an unchangeable unique ID for your account, your display name, and your password. You can change your display name in your profile or at the start of any meeting in the meeting lobby. You can change your password through the Profile page by getting a change password link.
Meeting Lobby
Enabling Microphone and Camera
In order to start or join a meeting, you must enable your microphone and camera in the browser. In most browsers, you will be prompted to enable them once you land on the Meeting Lobby page. If not, you can explicitly enable them. In Chrome, you will see:
Meeting Attributes
There are three settings for a meeting:
Room Name (Business Edition only) — This can be any name at all, but it's case sensitive (if you're telling others what room to meet in. Also, be sure to pick something specific and unique to avoid the likelihood of name collision on your site.
Your Name — pick any display name you like!
Meeting Type — use the dropdown to select a meeting type. This is optional, but helps us develop better behavioral models for the feedback we provide in the Riff Metrics dashboard.
Once you have filled in the meeting settings, click Join Meeting to enter the video chat room.
Inviting Others
In order to invite others to your meeting, it's easiest to use the invitation link feature. Click "Get Invite Link" and then the Copy button to get an invitation link you can share with others.
Video Chat
Multiparty Video Conferencing
The video chat application allows you to hold meetings with up to 4 people in Riff Remote Basic and up to 6 people in Riff Remote Business. You may experience lower quality video if you have a limited bandwidth Internet connection, but Riff continues to collect audio data in order to provide real-time and post-meeting feedback. If quality degrades during your meeting, leave the room and rejoin to try to establish a better peer-to-peer connection.
Meeting Mediator
The Meeting Mediator provides real-time feedback about interaction of participants in order to raise awareness interpersonal dynamics and nudge new behaviors. See Riff Metrics Explained for more details.
Screen Sharing
Screen sharing in Riff works as it does in most video conferencing applications, by allowing meeting participants to get a view of other participants' desktop applications or windows. The screen sharing button is the leftmost button under your own video display.
Document or Page Sharing
Document or page sharing is a feature unique to Riff. It allows participants to share most Web-addressable resources on screen such that everyone in the meeting can use that resource.
For example, if you use the document sharing feature to load an open access or permissioned Google doc, then all participants can have access to that resource in the window and can work on that document collaboratively.
Another example: in online courses, the document sharing window is used for delivering simulations, games, whiteboards, and other resources that groups need to work on together.
The screen sharing button is the middle button under your own video display.
Muting
In order to eliminate audio "clutter" from background noise during a Riff meeting, you can use the Mute button to suppress your audio signal. The screen sharing button is the leftmost button under your own video display.
In-Meeting Chat
Riff meetings support text chat. In-meeting chat can be toggled on and off using the round purple button in the bottom right corner of the video chat screen.
Leave Meeting
Be sure to click Leave Meeting when you're done with the video chat in order to properly end a meeting and see your metrics. Don't just close the tab!
Riff Metrics
Meeting Metrics
Immediately upon leaving the meeting room, Riff Metrics for the meeting will appear on screen. These metrics are explained in detail on the Riff Metrics Explained page.
History
A history of all meetings you have hosted or joined will be listed in the Meeting history on the left hand side of the metrics page. If you click on any meeting in the list, it will bring up the metrics for that session.
