10 Apps to Take Virtual Meetings to the Next Level

In today’s digital age, virtual meetings have become the norm, connecting teams across different locations and time zones. To elevate the virtual meeting experience, we explore ten exciting apps that can enhance collaboration, productivity, and engagement. From communication platforms to interactive tools and AI speech coaching, these apps offer unique features that transform virtual meetings into dynamic and efficient interactions. In this article, we’ll present ten of the best apps to enhance your virtual meetings, including the best apps to record and transcribe virtual calls.

By incorporating these apps and extensions into your virtual meeting routine, you can overcome the challenges of remote collaboration, foster better communication and engagement, and maximize the productivity and success of your virtual meetings.

How do I Make Virtual Team Meetings More Fun?

Making virtual team meetings more fun can be achieved by leveraging various apps and extensions that offer interactive and engaging features. Here are a few ways apps and extensions can enhance the fun factor in your virtual team meetings:

1. Virtual backgrounds: Many video conferencing platforms, such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams, offer virtual background options. Encourage team members to use creative and fun backgrounds that reflect their personality or a specific theme, adding a touch of fun and creativity to the meeting.
2. Emoji reactions and chat features: Take advantage of the built-in emoji reactions and chat features in video conferencing platforms. Participants can use emojis to express their reactions, provide feedback, or engage in playful interactions, enhancing the overall fun and interactivity of the meeting.
3. Icebreaker activities: Utilize online icebreakers games like Yoodli’s games to spark conversations and foster connections among team members. This can help create a relaxed and enjoyable atmosphere.
4. Kahoot: Incorporate interactive quizzes or trivia games using Kahoot to add an element of competition and engagement. Participants can join in and answer questions in real-time, making the meeting more interactive and enjoyable.
5. Miro: Use Miro’s collaborative whiteboard feature to engage participants in visual brainstorming sessions or team activities. Encourage everyone to contribute ideas, sketches, or sticky notes on the virtual board, fostering creativity and collaboration.
6. Loom: Share fun videos or screen recordings using Loom to inject humor, provide light-hearted updates, or deliver entertaining content during the meeting. This can help break the monotony and keep participants engaged.

By incorporating these apps and extensions into your virtual team meetings, you can infuse a sense of fun, interaction, and engagement, creating a more enjoyable and memorable experience for all participants.

#1 Slack: Streamlining Communication and Collaboration

Slack is a powerful communication platform that enables teams to collaborate seamlessly. With features like channels, direct messaging, and video calls, Slack provides a centralized hub for real-time discussions and information sharing during virtual meetings. It fosters transparent and efficient communication, ensuring everyone stays connected and aligned.

#2 Miro: Visual Collaboration and Brainstorming

Miro is a digital whiteboard tool that revolutionizes visual collaboration during virtual meetings. It allows participants to ideate, brainstorm, and share ideas in a visual format. With an extensive range of templates, sticky notes, and drawing tools, Miro facilitates interactive and dynamic discussions, ensuring every team member can actively contribute and visualize concepts.

Pro Tip: Capture and Transcribe Virtual Meetings with Recorder Apps

In the fast-paced world of virtual meetings, it’s not uncommon to encounter situations where important information is missed or forgotten amidst the flurry of discussions. This is where recorder apps come to the rescue, offering the ability to record and transcribe virtual meetings, ensuring that no details are lost and providing a valuable resource for future reference.

Capturing Every Detail

Recorder apps enable you to effortlessly record virtual meetings, capturing every spoken word and preserving the entire conversation. By simply hitting the record button, you can create an audio or video recording of the meeting, ensuring that you have a comprehensive record of the discussions, decisions, and action items.

Enhancing Accessibility and Review

Transcription is a key feature offered by recorder apps, as it converts the recorded audio into written text. This functionality not only facilitates accessibility for individuals with hearing impairments but also allows all meeting participants to review and search for specific information easily. Transcriptions make it effortless to revisit important points, extract key insights, and reference critical details discussed during the virtual meeting.

Facilitating Post-Meeting Analysis

Recorder apps prove invaluable when it comes to post-meeting analysis. By having a recorded and transcribed version of the meeting, participants can carefully review the discussion, identify any missed points, and gain a comprehensive understanding of the meeting outcomes. It allows for more accurate and informed decision-making and ensures that all action items are accurately documented and followed up on.

#3 Yoodli: AI Speech Coach for Confident Communication (plus Built-In Recording Capabilities)

Virtual meetings often require clear and confident communication. Yoodli, an AI speech coach, discreetly joins virtual meetings and provides judgment-free coaching on your speech and communication skills with Individual Mode, or Private Yoodli.

Private Yoodli is one of the best apps to enhance your virtual meetings. By analyzing your delivery, providing feedback, and quantifying progress over time, Yoodli helps you develop more effective communication skills, boosting your confidence and your overall ability to communicate clearly.

What’s more, Yoodli can automatically generate transcripts of your online calls, making it easy to look back at previous meetings.

#4 Loom: Engaging Video Messaging and Screen Recording

Loom takes virtual communication to the next level by offering video messaging and screen recording capabilities. It allows users to record and share video messages or screen recordings, enabling effective communication of complex ideas or asynchronous updates. Furthermore, Loom’s intuitive interface and easy sharing options make it a valuable tool for enhancing engagement and clarity in virtual meetings.

#5 Krisp: Noise Cancellation App for Virtual Meetings

Background noise can be a major distraction during virtual meetings. Krisp, a noise-canceling software, filters out ambient sounds, ensuring crystal-clear audio quality for all participants. By eliminating unwanted noise, Krisp creates a focused and immersive meeting environment, enabling seamless communication and letting you focus on important discussions.

#6 Otter.ai: Virtual Meeting App for Automated Transcription and Captions

Taking notes during virtual meetings can be a challenge. However, Otter.ai comes to the rescue with its automated transcription and captioning abilities. It transcribes and captions virtual meetings in real time, allowing participants to review and search for specific information later. Otter.ai simplifies information retention, ensuring valuable insights and action items are not lost.

#7 Trello: Streamlined Project Management and Collaboration

In virtual meetings, staying organized and tracking progress is essential. Trello, a popular project management tool, helps teams achieve precisely that. With its intuitive boards, lists, and cards, Trello enables seamless task management, progress tracking, and collaboration. By integrating Trello into virtual meetings, teams can maintain focus, prioritize tasks, and ensure overall productivity.

#8 Grammarly: Enhancing Communication Clarity and Professionalism

Effective communication is crucial in virtual meetings. Grammarly, a widely used writing assistant, helps improve grammar, spelling, and clarity in real-time. It ensures professional and error-free communication, enhancing the overall quality of interactions during virtual meetings. What’s more, Grammarly acts as a reliable proofreader, making sure your chat messages and contributions are polished and impactful.

#9 Kahoot: Bring Fun to Virtual Meetings with Gamified Engagement and Interactive Presentations

Adding an element of fun and interactivity to virtual meetings is essential for engagement. Kahoot, for example, offers game-based elements to energize meetings, training sessions, and presentations. With quizzes, surveys, and interactive challenges, Kahoot transforms virtual meetings into immersive experiences, encouraging active participation and knowledge retention.

#10 Coda: Collaborative Document for Productive Meetings

Finally, Coda is a versatile app that combines the functionalities of documents, spreadsheets, and databases into one collaborative workspace. With Coda, you can not only set agendas, take notes, and review work—but do this all in a single document. What’s more, it enables teams to create interactive meeting agendas, track action items, and collaborate on shared documents in real-time. Coda streamlines the meeting process overall and ensures that all meeting-related information and discussions are easily accessible in one place.

Elevating Virtual Meetings with Innovative Apps — In Summary

Virtual meetings have become an integral part of our professional lives, and leveraging the right tools can significantly enhance collaboration, productivity, and engagement. The ten apps discussed—Slack, Miro, Loom, Krisp, Otter.ai, Trello, Grammarly, Yoodli, Kahoot, and Coda—offer unique features that cater to different aspects of virtual meetings. Whether it’s seamless communication, visual collaboration, noise cancellation, transcription, project management, error-free writing, speech coaching, interactive engagement, or collaborative documentation, these apps empower teams to maximize their virtual meeting experiences.

By using these apps in your virtual meetings, you can create a more interactive, productive, and engaging environment. Overall, this will lead to better communication, enhanced collaboration, and improved outcomes.

Remember, the key to successful virtual meetings is not just the apps you use but also the effective utilization of their features. Experiment, adapt, and find the combination of apps that works best for your team’s unique needs. Let these apps be your allies in fostering collaboration and achieving success in the digital workplace.

So, gear up, explore these incredible apps, and unlock the true potential of your virtual meetings!