User Guide

Getting Started with MeetingPortal

Follow these steps to be up and running with MeetingPortal in no time. This guide will help you complete your initial set-up, and walk you through the key features and options you need to get the most out of MeetingPortal.

1. Connect your calendars to MeetingPortal

If you are using Microsoft Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace (GSuite) then you can complete all the necessary steps from within MeetingPortal. Please see our guides on Microsoft 365 Setup and Google Workspace Setup for instructions on how to set up your Microsoft 365/Google Workspace account correctly and connect it to MeetingPortal.

If you are using a different system to manage your meeting room calendars (for example a local Exchange server or CalDav) then you can connect your device to the service and MeetingPortal will read your meeting information from your device’s calendar. Please see the section on Using MeetingPortal with your device’s calendar in our Device Setup guide for information on how to do this.

2. Choose how meetings are displayed

MeetingPortal features a number of ways to customize the way your meeting information is displayed which can all be found in the Calendar and display section of MeetingPortal’s settings.

1. Rename calendars – Your meeting rooms might not always be named the way you want in your calendars. If you find this is the case, MeetingPortal allows you to rename them. Select Rename calendars, tap on the calendar you wish to rename, and enter your desired name.
2. Customize the meeting schedule display – By default, MeetingPortal displays your meetings in a calendar display of the current day so that you can clearly see when the meeting room is free. MeetingPortal also supports displaying upcoming meetings in a list which can be more efficient if your meeting rooms are often fully booked. Select Display meetings as, and choose a list of either today’s meetings or include up to two days of future meetings.
3. Display only meetings accepted by the calendar – If your meeting room calendar automatically declines new meetings that clash with existing ones (which is the case for both Microsoft 365 room mailboxes and Google Workspace resources) then turn on this option to hide declined meetings.
4. Time format and Language – These options control whether times are displayed in a 12 or 24 hour format, and which of the 23 supported languages is used in the main sections of the app. MeetingPortal will choose the best defaults based on your Device’s location settings, but you can override this and choose your own time format and language.

3. Security

The Security section of MeetingPortal’s settings gives you a number of controls which allow you to secure MeetingPortal’s settings from unauthorized access and to control what meeting information is displayed on MeetingPortal’s main display.

1. Require passcode to access settings – If you wish to protect MeetingPortal’s settings from unauthorized access, you can set a 4 digit passcode which must be entered before MeetingPortal’s settings will open. Turn on the option and enter your desired passcode twice to activate it.
2. Meeting Information – If you have sensitive information in the titles of your meetings, you can use the Label meetings with setting to control what is displayed. Choose from displaying the meeting’s title, the meeting’s organizer, or simply show that the room is booked without revealing the title or organizer. When turned off, the Display meeting details setting will prevent the meeting’s description and list of participants from being shown when a meeting is tapped on the main screen.

4. Optional Features

MeetingPortal offers a number of powerful features to help you manage your meeting rooms, available in the Optional features section. The ideal combination of settings will differ from organization to organization so we recommend that you trial different settings before settling on the combination that works best for you.

1. Ending and extending meetings – If a meeting is running longer than expected, MeetingPortal can allow users to extend it if the room is available. Conversely, if a meeting ends earlier than expected the booking can be ended early to free the room for other meetings.
2. Check-in – One of the largest causes of meeting room inefficiency is abandoned bookings – meetings which are booked in the room but then not attended. MeetingPortal can help to prevent these with the Check-in feature. When turned on, a Check-in button will be displayed on the main screen for each meeting. If this button is not pressed 10 minutes after the meeting was scheduled to start then the meeting will be cancelled and the room will be available for other bookings.
3. Room booking – MeetingPortal can also allow users to book the room directly from the screen. When the Allow booking option is turned on, users will be able to book the room if it is available. Bookings will start from the time the Book now button is pressed, and users have a choice of booking the room for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, or 2 hours. If the Users can set a message when booking feature is turned on, then users will be given the option to set a meeting title and message before completing their booking.
4. Find free rooms – If the room is currently booked, the Find free rooms feature allows users to find other free rooms in the building. When turned on, the Find free rooms option adds a button to the main screen that lists all rooms currently free. Select the rooms you want to include using the Rooms to check option and they will be displayed in the list. The list is ordered by the amount of free time, so the room with the most free time is displayed first.

5. Customize Branding

MeetingPortal allows you to choose your own background image. MeetingPortal supports any size of background image – the image chosen will be scaled so that it covers your devices display. For best results, you should create an image that exactly matches the size of your device’s display in pixels. To find the ideal background image size for your device, open the Appearance and branding section of MeetingPortal’s settings. The ideal size will be shown just underneath the option for setting the background image.

MeetingPortal also allows you to display a custom logo. The chosen logo will appear at the top of the main screen. The ideal image size for a custom logo is 500 x 100 pixels, however you can use an image with a different size and it will be scaled to fit. If you would like to have your logo appear in a different part of the main display you can add it to your background image instead of loading it separately.

MeetingPortal also allows you to customize the colors of visual elements such as buttons, text, and dialog backgrounds. For a full list of the customization options please see the Appearance and branding section of our full guide.

Using MeetingPortal with Office 365

Before connecting MeetingPortal to your Office 365 account you need to make sure that your meeting rooms are set up and managed in your Office Organization.

Setting up Office 365

The recommended procedure is to set up each of your meeting rooms as a Room and equipment Mailbox. Room and Equipment Mailboxes will appear as a resource when you are creating a meeting, and support advanced features such as automatically declining meeting invitations when there are clashes and double bookings.

If you do not wish to use Room and Equipment Mailboxes, it is also possible to set up each meeting room as a Shared calendar. Shared Calendars do not show up as resources when creating a meeting, and do not automatically decline bookings if there is a conflict, so using Room and Equipment Mailboxes is highly recommended.

By default, Office 365 labels events in resource calendars with the meeting’s organizer rather than its title. If you would like to see your meetings displayed in MeetingPortal with their title, you will need to connect to your Office 365 instance via PowerShell, and then change the default settings for your hosted Exchange server. You can find instructions in our helpful guide.

Choose a connection method

There are two methods that you can use to connect MeetingPortal to Office 365: a Personal or service account and an Enterprise application. Both offer their own advantages and tradeoffs:

You can also use a free Gmail account instead of a Google account in your organization. By default, Google only lets you share resource calendars with the See all event details permission (which won’t let you book meetings from MeetingPortal) but you can change this in the Google Workspace Admin console.

Just go to Apps > Google Workspace > Calendar > General settings > External sharing options for secondary calendars and select Share all information, and outsiders can change calendars

Connecting MeetingPortal to your Google account

Once you have set up your Google account, you can connect it to MeetingPortal. Open MeetingPortal and go to Settings (the cog icon in the bottom right of the main display). If you haven’t previously connect MeetingPortal to any calendars, you’ll see a Connect button, or if MeetingPortal is already connected to a calendar you’ll see a Change button. Click Connect or Change.

You should see a list of calendar services to choose from (Microsoft 365, Google, and your device calendar). Select Google Workspace/GSuite and you will be asked to sign in. You should then see a screen asking permission to grant MeetingPortal access to your account. MeetingPortal will request the following permissions:

• View a list of your calendars – This is necessary in order to allow you to choose the calendar(s) you want to use with MeetingPortal.
• Read and write access to your calendars – This allows MeetingPortal to read meeting information from your calendars, and also allows you to use MeetingPortal’s advanced features such as booking a room from the display and automatically cancelling abandoned meetings.

MeetingPortal will not be given any further access to your Google account, and will only be able to read the information listed above. Once you have granted MeetingPortal permission to access your account, check out our Quick start guide for more information on how to get started with MeetingPortal.

How to Use MeetingPortal

The main screen

This is the main meeting display. From here you can see details of the current meeting, look at the day’s schedule, or make a new booking. MeetingPortals’s main screen can be shown as either a room or dashboard display.

See below the illustration for detailed information about each part of the display, and see the configuration section for how to select the room or dashboard display.

Current time – MeetingPortal takes the time of day from your device’s clock, which can be changed in your device’s settings. MeetingPortal can also display the date on the main screen.

Meeting room name – The name of the calendar you have selected.

Current/upcoming meetings – The current meeting name, duration, and number of participants is displayed. If there is another meeting starting in the next ten minutes, it is displayed below.

Meeting tools (optional) – These tools allow you to check-in, extend, or end a meeting early. See optional features for more information.

Schedule display – The schedule display shows the meeting plan for the day (or days depending on your settings). It can be configured to show a list of upcoming meetings, or a calendar view of the day. Tap on a meeting to view detailed information about the meeting. The display is colored by the meeting status (one of Free, Occupied, or Soon to be occupied).

Book/Book now (optional) – Allows you to make impromptu room bookings for up to two hours, or optionally also book meetings in the future. See optional features for more information.

Find a room (optional) – Allows you to find a free meeting room in the building. See optional features for more information.

Settings – Access the app settings to select a meeting room calendar, configure optional features, or customize branding.

MeetingPortalConfiguration

The following settings allow you to customize your MeetingPortal experience. Use them to choose the room calendar to display, activate and configure optional features, or control the branding and appearance of the room display. The settings screen can be accessed from the Configuration screen by tapping the cog icon on the main screen.

Optional features

Require check-in – When selected, users will be required to check-in to meetings when they enter the room. This can be done by tapping a check-in button on the main screen, and must be done within ten minutes of the meeting starting. Meetings not checked-in after this time will be automatically ended.

The check-in feature writes a small amount of text to the calendar event’s description when the meeting is checked-in.

Allow booking – Allows users to book the meeting room (if its schedule allows). Choose between:

• Booking not allowed – When selected, users are able to book the room (if its schedule allows).
• Instant bookings only – The room may be booked immediately for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, one hour, or two hours.
• Instant and later bookings – The room may be booked immediately, and also in advance.

When booking is enabled, then the following options can be configured:

These settings apply to all bookings:

Suggested booking lengths – this setting affects the length of time suggested when the user is booking the room:

• Friendly booking end times – Booking lengths will be chosen so that your booking finishes at a round time (such as on the hour).
• Friendly booking lengths – Round booking lengths will be suggested (for example 30 minutes or 1 hour)

Include video conferencing – this setting allows you to control whether a video conference link is added to bookings made from the MeetingPortal display:

• Always – A video conference link is included with all bookings.
• Never – No video conference links are included with any bookings
• Per booking – MeetingPortal will ask the user at the time a booking is being made

Users can add attendees when booking – (only available for Microsoft 365 Enterprise Application connections). Users can add attendees (both inside and outside your organization) when booking from the MeetingPortal display. The attendees will receive a calendar invite with a videoconferencing link.

These settings appear twice, and can be set separately for instant and later bookings:

Users can set a message when booking – When selected, users are able to set their own meeting title and description when making impromptu bookings. When set to Optional, a default meeting title is pre-entered. When set to Required there is no default title, and the user must enter a title.

Users can set the organizer when booking – (only available for Microsoft 365 Enterprise Application connections). Users can choose a member of your organization to be the meeting’s organizer. The meeting will be created in the member’s calendar and the meeting room will be set as the meeting’s location. When set to Optional the user can book a meeting without selecting an organizer (in which case the booking will be created in the meeting room’s calendar only). If set to Required then the user must choose an organizer.

Allow ending meetings – When selected, users are able to end the current meeting directly from the main screen. It is also possible to end upcoming meetings that are starting in the next ten minutes.

When ending meetings – There are two options for ending meetings:

• Delete the meeting – this will completely remove the meeting from the meeting room’s calendar
• Change the meeting finish time – This will bring forward the meeting end time. Note that if this would cause the meeting duration to be less than one minute, it will be deleted instead.

Note that this setting does not affect the way that meetings are ended by the check-in feature (see below). Meetings ended due to not being checked in are always deleted.

Allow extending meetings – When selected, users are able to extend the current meeting (if the room schedule allows). The meeting may be extended by 15 minutes, 30 minutes, one hour, or two hours.

When allowing ending or extending meetings, choosing to allow “only for meetings booked from a MeetingPortal display” restricts ending or extending meetings to only meetings with no organizer, or where the organizer is the conference room.

This is usually the case for meetings booked from the MeetingPortal display but can also apply to meetings booked directly in the conference room’s calendar by an admin.

Find free rooms – When selected, users are able to search for other free rooms in the building, and also book them (if the Allow Booking setting is enabled).

Rooms that are either free now, or will be free in the next ten minutes are included in the list, and the rooms are ordered by the length of time available (with the longest time listed first).

Rooms to check – The list of calendars to search when checking for free rooms. You may select as many calendars as you would like.

If you do not see all your rooms in the list, make sure that they have been added to your device by following the instructions in Microsoft 365 Setup, Google Workspace Setup, or Android/iOS Setup (depending on which method you are using to connect MeetingPortal to your calendars).

Appearance and branding

MeetingPortal allows you to set a custom background image for the display. This can contain your logo, or other company colors and imagery, and can be used to further personalize the display with your branding.

It is recommended that you use an image with the same aspect ratio as your device, but if a different aspect ratio is used then MeetingPortal will scale the image so that the view is always entirely filled.

For best results, you should create an image that exactly matches the size of your device’s display in pixels. This ideal size for your device is shown underneath the Background image option.

MeetingPortal also allows you to display a custom logo. The chosen logo will appear at the top of the main screen. The ideal image size for a custom logo is 500 x 100 pixels, however you can use an image with a different size and it will be scaled to fit. If you would like to have your logo appear in a different part of the main display you can add it to your background image.

Booking and check-in

Book your room from the screen, find free rooms close by, and clear unused bookings automatically. Learn how to use MeetingPortal’s advanced features to manage your meeting spaces. All advanced features are optional, so make sure that you have activated and configured them by following the configuration instructions above.

Find a room

Before using this feature, you need to select the calendars you would like to check (see the Rooms to check option in the Configuration settings described above).

The free rooms controls can be found at the bottom right corner of the main display (for horizontal devices), or at the bottom of the display (for vertical devices). To find a free room, tap the button labelled Find a room.

You will be presented with a booking screen showing all free rooms found. The list is ordered with the rooms having the most free time appearing first. You are able to book your desired room by tapping the corresponding Book now button. To complete your booking, follow the booking instructions above to select your desired amount of time.

MeetingPortal Setup Instructions (Android, No MDM)

Downloading the APK

• First download the up-to-date version of the MeetingPortal app here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/13pbK7uDHsXlc9kTsszU2wd6njwS9L8TC?usp=sharing

Adding app to the device

• Follow the instructions in the video to the left, which we’ve summarized here:
  1. Follow the instructions for how to open a browser window by swipping down until you can get to settings, then opening a Chrome browswer
  2. Navigate to this page: www.poetexas.com/meetingportal-manual/#software_update
  3. Click in the link above.  Accept the warnings to download and install.
  4. When given the option, accept the new setting to allow Chrome to install an app.  We’ll set it back before the end.
  5. Install the app.  All of your settings should transfer over, inluding your license.
  6. Click done, then navigate back to the Advanced Settings in Chrome to turn off the permissions to allow Chrome to install apps.
  7. Click the square icon on the bottom and swip up unitl MeetingPortal restarts.

Reach out to us at success@poetexas.com if you have any questions.

Activating the License

1. If you don’t have your license key already you should receive it from our customer success team.
2. Please send an email with the “MeetingPortal License Key Request” subject to success@poetexas.comIn the interface of the MeetingPortal app press the gear icon to enter the settings.
3. Scroll down to the “Subscription” section of the screen, and enter your license key.

Uploading the new MeetingPortal app

1. Download the new APK from chapter 1.
2. Repeat the process from chapter 2.

Current version update notes: (MeetingPortal 1.5.20_b588)

Gain valuable insights into the way your meeting spaces are being used with our new room analytics feature.

Available as part of a Dash Enterprise subscription, room analytics gives you insights into how your spaces are being utilized, how they’re being booked, and how you can increase efficiency in your workplace.

We’ve also added support for Microsoft GCC and GCC‑High tenants, the ability to bring up a room’s schedule from the find a free room, and many other fixes and improvements.

MeetingPortal Setup Instructions (Android, ManageEngine, Kiosk)

1. Downloading the APK

1. First download the up-to-date version of the MeetingPortal app here: 

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/13pbK7uDHsXlc9kTsszU2wd6njwS9L8TC?usp=sharing

2. Adding the App to the repository

1. Log into your ManageEngine account you created in the MDM+ABM Initialization Instructions (ManageEngine, Kiosk) – rev.4 document.
2. Go to the App Repository page and click Add App->Android Enterprise App->Self Hosted Apps. For more information on enterprise apps please refer to ManageEngine’s documentation.
3. Proceed to the license activation step (chapter 3). In the APK upload dialogue provide the MeetingPortal APK file you downloaded in chapter 1.
4. Proceed to the license activation step (chapter 3).

3. Activating the License

1. If you don’t have your license key already you should receive it from our customer success team.
   Please send an email with the “MeetingPortal License Key Request” subject to success@poetexas.com
2. Navigate to the “Configurations” tab of the MeetingPortal app in your App Repository
3. Locate the “License Key” input field and enter your license key.
4. Press the “Save” button at the bottom of the page.

4. Modifying the Kiosk Profile

1. Navigate to the “Kiosk (Wallstation Android)” profile in Profiles page and click “Modify Profile” as shown below.
2. In the next screen click “Continue” and then navigate to the “Kiosk” tab.
3. In the “Hidden Apps” field add the MeetingPortal app added in chapter 2.
4. Save the profile. You should now have the MeetingPortal app operational alongside the ControlPortal app.

5. Uploading new MeetingPortal app versions

1. Download the new APK from chapter 1.
2. Navigate to the App Repository page and click the “Upload New Version” button as shown to the left.
3. In the APK upload dialogue provide the MeetingPortal APK file you downloaded in chapter 1.
4. The apps should be updated automatically by the MDM system at the soonest possible opportunity.