EnGuard Telehealth includes real-time audio and video chat, inline group chat, and document sharing.
NOTE: While any number of participants can be invited to an online meeting, audio and video chat is handled via a peer-to-peer system, so it's limited to up to 9 concurrent users. However, an unlimited number of people can use the group text chat during a meeting.
Telehealth is a great way to talk with your patients or meet with your team and colleagues. There's no software to download, no services to sign up for and meetings are both desktop and mobile friendly! (As long as your mobile browser supports WebRTC.) The required web browser for the Host to use is Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome on a computer, we do not recommend hosting a session from a mobile phone.
Telehealth uses a peer-to-peer connection, therefore the Video Quality of the meeting depends on the internet speed of each connected participant. No data is passed through or saved on EnGuard servers, your meeting is 100% private. Each participant is required to be connected to the internet via wired ethernet connection or WIFI. We do not support Cellular Data or Satellite internet service.
Your participant(s) will need a PC or Apple computer with a web camera. Or they can use an iOS or Android mobile device. When prompted, each participant must allow access to the camera and microphone on their device. In addition, yours and their operating system may have internal firewall or network settings that can inhibit the performance of Online Meetings.
Telehealth meetings can be set up and scheduled from within EnGuard's powerful calendaring system. When creating a meeting invitation -- whether it's a one-time meeting or a recurring appointment -- a new online meeting can ALSO be created and the link is included with the invitation when it's sent out.
How to Create a Meeting
Step 1: Click on More in the top navigation bar
Step 2: Click on Telehealth
Step 3: Click on New
Step 4: Title your meeting and you're ready to get started as the meeting's title is all that is actually required to save the meeting.
However, there are a few other settings you can add on the creation screen: you can add a password and/or you can schedule the online meeting so that it will be used on a regular basis.
We recommend Allow guests for a frictionless experience for your participants. Once you click the Save button, you can either stop there or open the meeting and further customize your settings.
Complete Settings
After you create your meeting, you can open it and modify its settings.
Below is what the Telehealth Meeting page looks like:
As an aside, you can edit these settings at any time by clicking on the Settings (gear) icon whenever you open your meeting.
Details
Title - This will be whatever you called the online meeting when it was initially set up, but you can change it at any time.
Secure with a password - If you want to lock access to the meeting with a password, that's not a problem. Simply set the password here to whatever you want. When sending out the invitation, however, be sure to let your participants know the password or they won't be able to join.
Allow guest users - Don't want to force your attendees to log in? No problem! Just enable "Allow guest users" and anyone with the link can attend the meeting, no log in required.
Allow attendees to start the meeting - Enabled by default, this means attendees can start the meeting without the Organizer to be present.
Security
Waiting Room - Waiting rooms allow organizers to specify which attendees should wait to be admitted into an Online Meeting. None, Guests, or Everyone can be subject to waiting. When a new attendee "joins", a pop-up appears announcing they're waiting to be admitted into the meeting.
File upload permissions - Each meeting has the ability to allow users to upload files. However, the meeting organizer can set file upload permissions so that only the organizer has upload permissions, people who are authenticated users can upload files, or anyone can upload. NOTE: - It IS possible to restrict the file extensions that are able to be uploaded to an online meeting. However, the File Extension types are set by EnGuard.
Mute Others - Organizers can pick which type of attendee has the ability to mute other Online Meeting participants. While users may be allowed to mute other participants, they do not have the ability to un-mute participants. They must un-mute themselves.
Date and Time
Scheduled Meeting - Toggle Scheduled Meeting if you want to continue using the same online meeting on a regular basis. This is similar to creating recurring Calendar appointments where you set the state date and time as well as the ending date and time. NOTE: When an Online Meeting is created as part of a standard Calendar appointment, these will be set to mirror the date(s) and time(s) associated with the Appointment.
End Behavior - At the end of the scheduled recurrence, you have options to Archive Meeting, which ends the schedule but keeps the meeting in your list, Delete Meeting, or Keep Active.
Video Settings
Webcam - This is the stream quality for your online meeting. Video can take up a lot of bandwidth, so keeping this set to Low is a "best practice" if at all possible.
Microphone - This allows you to set the default microphone you use during the meeting. This will generally default to whichever default input device is set for your computer, but you can change it to headphones, an attached USB mic or any other input device you have set up.
Speakers - Just as with the microphone setting, this is the audio output for the meeting. Again, this will generally default to whichever default output device is set up for your computer, but you can change it to whatever.
Several advanced audio controls are also available:
Automatic volume controls - Enabling this allows EnGuard to automatically handle increasing or decreasing the volume of the meeting.
Echo cancellation - Enabling this allows EnGuard to automatically handle echo management.
Reduce background noise - Enabling this allows EnGuard to automatically handle reducing any background noise that may be picked up by the microphone selected.
Meeting Link
Meeting Link - This is the link to the meeting that can be shared with whoever you want to attend. You can select the text and copy it, or use the copy icon.
File Storage
This section will initially be empty. However, as you use the meeting, it will keep track of the number of files shared in the meeting and the space taken up by those files.
Chat
While chat is a great feature of online meetings, it may be necessary to delete the chat. For example, if the same meeting is used on a weekly or monthly basis for a meeting, you may want to delete the live chats after whatever information in the chat was transcribed to a separate document, once tasks have been created from action items, etc. This area allows you to delete all of the live chats that have occurred during the meeting.
Save Settings
Once you have all your settings in place, be sure to Save them. As an aside, if you need to change a setting, like allowing guests to upload images, you can change that during the meeting and the setting takes effect immediately.
Online Meetings and Calendar Invites
When creating a meeting invitation in your calendar, you have the option to Create Online Meeting. This setting allows organizers to have a new online meeting created, automatically, to be used for the appointment that's being set up. The meeting will use the appointment's Subject as its name and will appear in the Online Meetings area. In addition, a link to the meeting is sent with the meeting invitation to all attendees. By default, meetings are initially created to allow for guest users, do not have passwords assigned, and are set so that only the Organizer can upload files. Therefore, if any of these settings need to be changed, they'll need to be changed prior to the meeting date/time, and any changes manually sent to the attendees. NOTE: If an appointment that has an online meeting associated to it is cancelled or otherwise deleted, the online meeting is not deleted immediately. Instead, EnGuard runs a nightly routine that will remove online meetings associated with deleted/cancelled appointments.
Access Previous Meetings
Any meeting room you create are saved as a separate cards. That means you can access, and re-access, any past meetings. While the video isn't saved, any live chats and shared documents ARE saved, allowing you to refer back to those at a later date whenever needed.
Participated Meetings
Not only are the meetings that YOU create are listed, so are meetings that you've been invited to with other users within your organization. To access these, simply click on the Participated Meetings option from the left navigation pane. Here, meetings that you've participated in are listed as separate cards. While you won't be able to edit any information on these cards, you do have the ability to revisit the meetings, see chats, re-login to the video chat and more.
Sharing Online Meeting URLs
The URL for an online meeting can be accessed in two locations:
1. Using the Actions (⋮) menu on a meeting's card -- simply click on the menu and select Copy Link from the dropdown. (An online meeting can be deleted from here as well.)
2. By opening the actual meeting and copying the URL from its settings.
The first method is, by far, faster and more convenient. It allows you to quickly grab a URL and share it in a live chat, in an email, text message, or when creating a single or recurring appointment.
Starting a Meeting
Click on the meeting to open it
If your web browser asks you to allow access to your microphone and camera
Click to allow, then click Start Meeting
Turn ON Camera and/or the microphone
You can also Share your screen here
Click the red Hang Up button end (or exit) the meeting
Participant Login
Your participant(s) will click on the URL provided by you, it will launch a web browser tab on their device and he/she will be presented with this prompt, they should select Login as guest (only visible if you toggled Allow guests in settings).
They will enter their name and click Join
If their web browser asks them to allow access to their microphone and camera click allow.
Click Start Meeting