Creating invites via Outlook

The Pexip Service add-in for Outlook lets you easily add a VMR — either your own, or a one-time-use room — to meetings that you create or edit in your Outlook desktop client.

Here's how to create invitations using Outlook calendar:

  1. Check that your IT team has made the Pexip Service add-in available to Outlook users — it's supported in the desktop and web versions of Outlook. You may need to download the Pexip Service add-in from the Microsoft Windows AppSource store. In other cases it may be made available to you automatically.

  2. When the Pexip Service add-in has been installed, you see a Pexip Service button with the Pexip logo when you are creating or editing a meeting invitation. Click this button to open the add-in:

  3. If asked, log into the app by entering your Pexip username and password:

  4. You now see the Make it a video meeting panel:

    Firstly, decide where to host the meeting:

    • By default, the meeting will be hosted in your own VMR.

    • However, if you want to create a unique VMR just for this meeting, select Create a one-time room.

      One-time rooms are meant for a single, one-off meeting. They are useful when:

      • You don't want to think about changing PIN codes, but still want the privacy.
      • You have back-to-back meetings and are worried there might be "collisions" between participants in different meetings.
      • You don't want to communicate your personal VMR link externally.

      Note: One-time rooms that have not been used for over 100 days are deleted. This means that if a one-time room is created for a meeting that is scheduled 100 days into the future, that room will be deleted before its scheduled start time (unless that room has been used in the intervening period) and the meeting join links will fail. You can continue to use a one-time room in a recurring meeting providing the repeat interval is less than every 100 days.

    Then, decide how much joining information you want to add to the invitation:

    • To make it easy for your guests to join without needing to read a lot of text, you can add a simple, single link to the VMR. Do this by selecting Add meeting link.
    • However, if you’d like to give participants all the options for joining, select Add advanced room info. This will add joining instructions for browsers, Skype for Business, video systems (SIP/H.323), and telephones.
    • If you only want to include some of the options for joining, select Customize advanced room info, and select which joining instructions to include.

The appropriate links and join information are added to the meeting invitation.

Guidance for large meetings

The Pexip Service supports large video meetings where you can combine video conferencing and streaming to connect with hundreds or even thousands of participants. When planning large meetings, here's what you need to know to have the best possible user experience:

  • The Pexip VMR supports up to 100 two-way participants, where each participant can both send and receive audio and video. For large VMR meetings like this, we recommend having dedicated resources available to manage connections and microphone muting and unmuting.
  • If you need to connect more than 100 participants, we recommend streaming. Streaming participants receive audio and video, but do not send. This both reduces the bandwidth requirements and makes for a better user experience without accidental noise from unmuted microphones. For information on how to set up streaming from a Pexip VMR, please see Live event streaming and recording via the Pexip web app.