Live Calls

A recorded lesson teaches. A live call answers the question the lesson raised. You can add live calls to any course you sell, whether it runs as a group cohort or as a self-paced course somebody bought last winter.

Calls are for office hours, weekly Q&As, workshops, welcome sessions, anything where you want to be in the room with your students. TribeNest handles who is allowed in, reminds people beforehand, and keeps the recording afterwards.

Where calls live

There are two places to schedule a call, and they work the same way:

• On a self-paced course. Go to Courses, then Courses, open the three-dot menu on a course and choose Edit Course, then open the Calls tab. Everyone with access to that course can join.
• On a cohort. Open the cohort and go to its Calls tab. Everyone enrolled in that cohort can join.

There is no audience picker in either place, and that is deliberate. Standing on the course or the cohort already decides who the call is for, so there is nothing to get wrong. The ? beside the Calls heading spells this out on screen.

Scheduling a call

1. Open the Calls tab.
2. Click Schedule a call.
3. Fill in the details:
   • Title, like "Week 1 Q&A".
   • Description, optional. What the call is about.
   • Date and Start time. The time is read in your browser's timezone, and students see it converted to theirs, so nobody has to do the arithmetic.
   • Length, chosen from a list of durations.
   • Who can speak. Either Host only: students watch and chat, or Everyone can speak.
   • Seat limit, which only appears when everyone can speak. Leave it empty for no limit.
4. Click Schedule call.

The call appears on the month calendar below, and everyone in the audience can see it in their own calendar.

Choosing who can speak

This is the one choice worth thinking about before you send the invite.

• Host only is a broadcast. Students watch, listen and use the chat. It scales comfortably to a large class.
• Everyone can speak is a round table. Every attendee can turn on their camera and microphone. It is right for a handful of people and expensive for a crowd.

If you pick Everyone can speak, the Seat limit caps how many people can be in the room at once. Somebody arriving after the limit is reached is told the call is full and can try again when a seat frees up. Anybody already in the call is never bumped, so a dropped connection does not cost them their place.

When the room actually opens

The room opens 15 minutes before the start time and stops accepting new arrivals 2 hours after the end time.

A call that runs long is never cut off. Only new arrivals are refused, and everyone already in the room stays connected for as long as you keep talking.

Repeating calls

If your program has a rhythm, set the rhythm once instead of creating twelve calls by hand.

1. Click Repeating call.
2. Fill in the Title, Description, First call date and start time, and Length.
3. Choose how it Repeats: daily, weekly or monthly, and how many of those to skip between calls under Every.
4. Choose how it Ends:
   • After a number of calls, then set the Number of calls.
   • On a date, then set the Last day.
   • Never, for an open-ended schedule.
5. Set Who can speak and a seat limit, the same as a one-off call.
6. Click Create schedule.

The first call happens exactly on the date you picked and the pattern follows from it. Pick a Tuesday with a weekly repeat and the whole schedule runs on Tuesdays.

Your schedules are listed above the calendar, showing the pattern in plain words ("Weekly on Tuesday, 12 times") and a Scheduled through date telling you how far ahead the individual calls have been created. An open-ended schedule is extended for you automatically, so it never quietly runs out of dates.

Archiving a schedule

Use the three-dot menu on a schedule and choose Archive schedule to stop it producing new calls.

The calendar

The Calls tab shows a month at a time. Use the arrows to move between months and Today to jump back.

Click any call to open its details, where you can:

• Open call to go into the room.
• Copy link to hand the call address to somebody.
• Edit the time, the length or who can speak.
• Cancel call.

The room itself is the same one every TribeNest call uses. Being in a call walks through it: muting, sharing your screen, raised hands, chat and recording.

Once a call has happened, the same panel is where you find Watch recording, or an honest "A recording is processing" while it is still being put together.

What students see

Students do not have to dig through their inbox for a link.

• Their whole schedule sits in the calendar in the members area of your site, one month at a time.
• The calls for a course also appear at the bottom of that course's own page, and a cohort's calls appear on the cohort page. A student holding two enrollments sees each one's calls in its own place.
• Clicking a call opens its details, with the day, start time in their own timezone, how long it runs, and whether it is listen-only or open to everyone.
• Before the room opens they see a countdown, like "Opens in 3 hours". Once it opens, a Join call button appears.
• Students also get a reminder email before a call, with the details and a way straight in.

A student only ever sees calls they are actually allowed to join, so there are no locked rows and no doors that will not open.

Recordings

You can record a call while it is running. The recording control is in the call itself and is available to you as the host.

Once the call ends, the recording is processed and then appears on the same calendar entry as a Watch recording button, with its length beside it. While it is still being put together, students see Recording is processing.

Related guides

• Cohort courses for running a full group program around your calls.
• Creating a course for setting up the course your calls hang off.
• Managing students for seeing who is enrolled and can join.
• Student access for making sure a student can get into their course in the first place.