Being in a call

This page is the call screen itself. It is identical for a membership AMA, a course Q&A, a cohort session and a one-to-one coaching call, and identical whether you are the host or the person who turned up. Where something is only available to the host, it says so.

Before you join

Clicking Open call or Join call does not put you in the call. It puts you on a setup screen first, so that nobody ever lands in a room with a camera they did not expect to be on.

You get a preview of yourself at the top, and a small level bar in the corner that moves when you speak. If the bar does not move, your microphone is not the one you think it is.

Underneath the preview are two toggles:

• Mic on or Mic off. Whichever it says is what you are about to join with.
• Camera on or Camera off. The preview reads Your camera is off when you turn it off.

Each toggle has a small chevron beside it. Click it to pick a different device: Choose a microphone or Choose a camera. The list is read the moment you open it, so a headset you plugged in ten seconds ago is already there. A device your computer has not named for us shows as Device 1, Device 2 and so on, which is unhelpful but honest. If there is nothing at all to choose from, the menu says No devices found.

Once you are happy, click Join the call.

If the browser will not let you in

If your browser has blocked access, the setup screen says so in place of the preview: The browser did not grant access to your devices, followed by whatever your browser reported.

Fix it in the browser, not in TribeNest. There is usually a small camera icon at the right of the address bar where you can allow the site and reload.

The stage

Once you are in, the middle of the screen is everybody's video and the two bars around it are everything else.

The bar along the top carries the call's title, a timer counting how long you have been connected, In this call: 5, a red This call is being recorded badge when somebody is recording, and the connection state on the right.

Who is shown, and when

The screen arranges itself. You are never asked to choose a layout, though you can nudge it.

• Two of you. You each get half the screen, side by side on a laptop and stacked on a phone.
• A few of you. An even grid. Faces get bigger as people leave and smaller as they arrive.
• A crowd. The grid pages at eight people. Arrows and 2 / 4 appear underneath, so you can move through everybody.
• Somebody shares their screen. The share takes the stage, with faces in a strip beside it, and a label reading Ana's screen above it.

Two buttons at the top right switch between Gallery view (everybody the same size) and Speaker view (whoever is talking, big, with the others in a strip underneath). Speaker view holds on a person for a moment rather than flicking to whoever coughs.

You can also pin somebody. Hover a person's tile and click the pin icon to hold them on the big spot regardless of who is talking, then click it again to release them.

Why you can hear someone but not see them

A tile with a name and no picture is normal, and it means one of two things: that person has their camera off, or the call is busy enough that only the people currently speaking are being sent in full picture.

Either way their audio is completely unaffected. You are hearing everything they say. When they start talking, their picture comes back.

If somebody is talking but their tile is on another page, a small Speaking: Ana, Ben chip appears at the bottom of the stage so you know who it is without hunting.

Your own picture

In a call with three or more people, you appear in a small floating tile labelled You in the corner of the stage. Drag it anywhere and it snaps to the nearest corner when you let go, so it never ends up parked over somebody's face.

The eye icon on it hides it. Some people find watching themselves for an hour exhausting, and hiding your own tile changes nothing about what everyone else sees. It stays hidden for the rest of the call.

In a one-to-one call you are not a floating chip at all. You get a full tile beside the other person, at the same size.

Reading a tile

Each tile carries a few small things in its bottom corner:

• The person's name, or Ana's screen for a share.
• A crossed-out microphone when they are muted.
• Three little bars that move while they talk, so you can tell who a voice belongs to.
• (listening) after their name when they joined without a microphone at all.
• A raised hand badge in the top corner when they have a question.

The controls

Everything you can do sits in the dark bar along the bottom.

Mute and unmute

The first button reads Mute while you are live and Unmute while you are not. The chevron beside it switches microphone mid-call without dropping out.

If you talk for a couple of seconds while muted, a line appears saying You appear to be talking while muted, with an Unmute button right there and a Dismiss if you meant it.

Start and stop your camera

The second button reads Stop camera while your camera is on and Start camera while it is off. Its chevron switches camera.

Share your screen

Click Share screen and your browser asks what to share: a whole screen, a window, or a single tab. Whatever you pick goes to everyone in the call, live.

Your camera keeps running alongside the share rather than being replaced, so people can still see your face while you present. The button changes to Stop sharing.

While you are the one sharing, the stage shows you a calm placard reading You are presenting your screen with a Stop presenting button, rather than mirroring your own screen back at you.

Reactions

The smiley button opens a small row of emoji. Pick one and it floats up the screen for everyone, then disappears. It is the fastest way to agree with somebody without interrupting them.

You can also react to a particular chat message. See chat.

Raise your hand

Raise hand puts a hand badge on your tile and adds you to a queue that everybody can see. A soft chime sounds for everyone in the call, so a host who is mid-sentence still notices.

The button then reads Lower hand. Click it when your question has been answered.

Raised hands appear in three places: on the tile, as a pill in the top bar naming whoever is first in the queue, and at the top of the People panel in the order they went up. That order is the point. A host reading down the list is calling on people in the order they asked.

Hosts only: in the People panel, each raised hand has a small Lower button, and a Lower all hands button sits above the list. Use Lower all hands after you have worked through a round of questions, so the next round starts from an empty queue.

The People panel

The People button on the right opens a list of everyone in the call, with a crossed-out microphone or camera beside anyone who has theirs off, and (you) next to your own name. Raised hands are pulled to the top, numbered in the order they went up.

Chat during the call

The Chat button opens a rail beside the stage. On a phone it covers the stage instead, so the video never gets squeezed into a sliver.

• Type in Message everyone... and press Enter, or click the send arrow.
• Your own messages sit on the right in your site's colour. Everyone else's sit on the left with their name above.
• An empty chat says No messages yet. Say hello.
• You can see when somebody is composing: Ana is typing...
• Hover any message and click the small smiley on its corner to react to it. Reactions collect underneath the message with a count, and clicking one adds yours.

If you have chat closed, the button carries a badge with the number of messages you have not read. Opening the panel clears it. Scrolling up to read history does not yank you back down every time a new message lands.

Recording a call

Recording is a host control, so the Record button only appears for you.

Click Record and it starts immediately, capturing everyone in the call rather than just whoever is on your screen. A red This call is being recorded badge appears in the top bar for every person in the room, so nobody is ever recorded without seeing it. The button changes to Stop recording.

When the call ends, the recording is assembled into a single video. That takes a few minutes. Once it is ready it appears for exactly the people who could have joined that call: the members whose tier was invited, the students on that course or cohort, or the client whose session it was. It shows up on the same calendar entry as a Watch recording button with its length beside it, and reads "Recording is processing" until then.

Leaving while you are still recording

If you press Leave while your recording is running, TribeNest stops and asks first. The dialog is headed You are still recording and explains that if you leave without stopping, the recording keeps running until everybody has left.

You get three choices:

• Stop recording and leave. The usual one. The recording is closed off and you go.
• Leave, keep recording. For handing the room over. The call carries on being recorded while the others are still in it.
• Stay on the call. You did not mean to press it.

Call health

The small pulse icon in the top right opens Call health. It is there for the moment somebody says "you are breaking up" and you want to know why rather than guess.

The panel refreshes about once a second while it is open and shows three kinds of line.

• Bandwidth estimate, at the top, is how much traffic your connection is believed to be able to carry right now. When this number is low, everybody's video is deliberately kept small to protect the audio, so it is the first thing to look at when the whole call looks soft.
• Sending, next, is your own outgoing video. If anything on this line reads zero, your picture is not reaching the call at all, however fine it looks in your own preview.
• One line per person, underneath, each showing what quality of picture was asked for, what is actually arriving, and the size of the image being drawn.

The colour is the part to read. A line in red is getting less than it asked for, which means the trouble is on the way in to you rather than in their camera. A red Bandwidth estimate or a red Sending line means the trouble is on your side going out.

What to do about it is refreshingly boring: move closer to the router or plug into it, close the tab that is downloading something, ask the person on the red line to turn their camera off for a minute, or switch to voice only. If the estimate stays low for everybody, the connection is the limit and no setting will beat it.

Click the X to close the panel. It changes nothing while it is open. It only reports.

When your connection drops

Connections drop. Trains go into tunnels. TribeNest tries to put you back rather than ending the call.

The connection state in the top bar reads Connection lost, reconnecting, with the reassurance that everyone else is still in the call. If it succeeds, you are back where you were and your timer never restarted.

If it cannot get back on its own, the middle of the stage says Connection lost, with "Everyone else is still in the call. Try again to rejoin." and a Try again button. As long as you are still inside the join window, that button works.

You may also see one of these in the middle of the stage:

• Waiting for others to join, with "You are the first one here. The call starts when somebody else arrives." Perfectly normal if you turned up early.
• Everyone else has left the call, when the room has emptied around you. You are still connected, and anybody who comes back will find you here.
• The call has ended, when there is genuinely nothing left to be in.

Leaving

Click the red Leave button at the far right of the control bar. That is it. Your camera and microphone are released, the camera light goes out, and you land back where you came from: your calls calendar, your bookings, the course, or the member area, depending on where you opened the call.

Leaving does not end the call for anybody else. A call runs until the last person leaves it, or until the host cancels the call from the dashboard.

If you are recording, you get the dialog above first.

Where to go next

• Schedule the next one in member calls or course live calls.
• See how clients reach their own sessions in the client booking portal.
• Get back to the overview in calls.