Huddles and meetings
A Huddle is a live voice call, with optional camera and screen share, that you start from the place where the work is: a Thread, a Captain, a Note, a Space or a Conversation. A meeting is a call with a Whorl meeting link, so people outside your company can join through a lobby.
Note
Huddles show up only in companies where Whorl has turned them on. There is no switch for Huddles in Settings. If you do not see Start huddle, Huddles are not on for your company yet.
Start or join a Huddle
- Open the place where you want to talk: a Thread, a Captain, a Note, a Space or a Conversation.
- Choose Start huddle. In a Thread or Captain, the Huddle tab sits beside Digest, Files and Portals.
- When a Huddle is live, anyone who can open that place can choose Join huddle.
Audio comes first. Camera and screen share are optional. The call follows you: if you open another page, it keeps going in a small floating window with the same controls. Choose Minimize the huddle to shrink it to a bar, and Leave the huddle to end your part of the call.
Only direct and group Conversations ring, once, with a sound and a desktop notification. Threads, Captains, Notes and Spaces never ring. To bring someone in, mention them.
Microphone and camera access are controlled by your browser. If Whorl cannot use your microphone, allow it for the site and join again. Open Audio and video devices in the call to pick a microphone, speaker or camera.
Meetings and guests
A meeting has a link that stays the same if the event moves.
- People in your company who are invited join straight from the event or the link.
- Guests are people outside the company. They open the link with no Whorl account, type the name people will see, check their camera and microphone, and choose Ask to join.
Guests wait in a lobby until someone in the meeting lets them in. The people in the meeting see the Guest waiting and choose Let in or Deny. A Guest who was let in can rejoin if they leave.
The host has more controls:
- Copy meeting link copies the link.
- Mute everyone mutes every microphone, and each person can unmute.
- End for everyone disconnects everyone, Guests included, and turns away Guests who are still waiting.
- Remove a person from a call from their tile.
Which kind of meeting a calendar event gets, a Whorl meeting or a Microsoft Teams meeting, is set in Settings → Company → General, under Meetings. Teams meetings need Microsoft 365. See Calendar.
Recordings and transcriptions
Note
Recording and transcription are an experimental feature called Huddle recordings. It is off until an owner or admin turns it on for everyone in Settings → Company → Experimental features. A personal switch does not exist for it. See Experimental features.
With Huddle recordings on, Whorl records and transcribes huddles and meetings and files both where they happened.
- A Recording is the video and sound of the whole call, saved as
Recording.mp4. - A Transcription is what each person said, with their name and the time, saved as
Transcription.md.
Everyone is told. A red mark and the word Recording or Transcribing show for as long as either runs, and each person sees a line when they join. Anyone in the call can choose Stop recording or Stop transcribing for the rest of the call, and anyone can Turn back on unless the company turned it off. A Guest sees a notice and must tick I agree to be recorded and transcribed before Ask to join works, when the company records Guests.
Files land in the place the Huddle happened:
| Place | Where the files go |
|---|---|
| Thread or Captain | A Huddles folder inside its own folder in Files |
| Note or Space | A Huddles folder at the top of the Space's Files |
| Conversation or meeting | A Huddles folder in each member's Personal Space, one copy for each person, so it is private to them |
A Thread's agent can read the Transcription like any file in its folder, so "what did we decide in the huddle?" works in the Thread that held it.
Settings
Settings for recording appear in three places, and a closer one wins unless the company decides.
| Page | What you choose |
|---|---|
| Settings → Company → Huddles (owners and admins) | Record huddles and meetings, Transcribe what everyone says, Save Recordings and Transcriptions in Files, Record and transcribe Guests once they accept the lobby notice, whether cameras and microphones start on, Copy Conversation and Meeting huddles to everyone's personal Space, and how long to keep Recordings and Transcriptions: Forever, 1 year, 90 days or 30 days. Each recording setting can be set to Spaces and people can change it or locked to the company. |
| A Space's Huddles settings | The same defaults for Huddles in that Space's Threads, Captains and Notes. |
| Settings → Huddles | Your own camera and microphone when you join, and whether to record or transcribe Conversations and Meetings you start. Locked settings show who decides. |
These pages appear when Huddle recordings is on.