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Customer Story

Altrecht Deploys Google Meet on a Large Scale

To continue meetings in huge groups during lockdown using Chromebooks, the  straightforward solution was to deploy Google Meet
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Related Services
Google Meet, Google Workspace

Industry
Healthcare

Company
Xebia

Altrecht is a mental healthcare institution that focuses mainly at people with a psychiatric illness. This goes a step further than 'minor' mental and psychiatric problems: only when mental healthcare provided by the general practitioner is not enough, the patient can be (further) treated by Altrecht. They are mostly providing their services in the region of Utrecht, situated in the center of the Netherlands.
Why
To continue knowledge sharing and keep in touch during lockdowns
What
By implementing Google Meet to organize meetings for large groups
How
By discussing and testing the meeting scenarios thoroughly

Group Meetings During Lockdowns

At the time of the various corona waves and lockdowns, it was a challenge for Altrecht's practitioners to ensure that group meetings take place in a safe manner. Appointments with clients were made physically as much as possible or via one-on-one video meetings.

In order to share knowledge, discuss specific cases or discuss work processes, it was important that the internal group meetings could also continue. Especially since care providers do not always work at one fixed location and meeting physically was and is not always possible.

Altrecht already used video tools to organize meetings with a large number of both internal and external people. The existing video conferencing solution didn't have the flexibility to quickly scale in numbers of users and participants. All these aspects together meant that they really needed a strong, flexible, and, above all, scalable solution for video conferencing.
“Meeting new colleagues in breakout rooms created appreciation and connection.”
logo Altrecht
Sharon van den Ham Coordinator Collaboration & Leadership Altrecht

Continue All Online Activities

To meet with large numbers of people, in an organized manner, and from different locations, Altrecht has chosen Google Meet as its remote conferencing solution. The majority of Altrecht's office staff had already switched to Chromebooks at the start of the pandemic to be more flexible and to be able to work online easier.

Moreover, Altrecht had made the choice to switch to an organization-wide online workplace concept. Due to COVID, the selection process for a solution had to be accelerated. The first steps were taken to start with the 'free' corona option of the Meet functionality as an addition to the existing online meeting solution. This initial Google Meet deployment was supervised by Xebia. At the same time as the roll-out of the Chromebooks, this was a suitable solution that resulted in further collaboration to digitally transform Altrecht. In this way, employees are prepared to make the transition and able to manage the work environment themselves.

With Google Meet as an important application within Google Workspace, it was (and is) possible for Altrecht to continue its activities online. This ranges from sharing screens with each other, to team meetings, to executive meetings with external parties that must be managed by an assistant, to large gatherings with brainstorming sessions, polls and Q&A moments. With the necessary preparation and multiple hosts, even two New Year's meetings online became a success. Sharing a beautiful video and meeting new colleagues in breakout rooms created appreciation and connection.

“Xebia's help was very pleasant. They gave advice, if necessary checked with Google about the possibilities and helped with testing. They thought along about what was possible, but were also honest about functions that do not (yet) work well in Google Meet.”
logo Altrecht
Sharon van den Ham Coordinator Collaboration & Leadership Altrecht

Meetings with More Than 200 Participants

Using Google Meet did not always go smoothly for everyone. There are many possible meeting scenarios. Just think of multiple co-hosts, managing dozens of users in predetermined breakout rooms, getting everyone back into the main meeting, automatically admitting people into the meeting versus controlled admitting, answering questions in a Q&A session, etcetera.

“Although it was quite a bit of puzzling, with the necessary preparation and multiple hosts, we managed to successfully hold two online New Year's meetings. About 200 participants partook in this. Sharing a beautiful video and meeting new colleagues in breakout rooms created appreciation and connection", says Sharon van den Ham, Coordinator Collaboration & Leadership Altrecht.

These options also ensure that you have a good understanding of how Google Meet works. In this, Xebia helps Altrecht to discuss and test the meeting scenarios together, to explain the setup and use of Meet in (large, complex) video meetings. In short: to achieve the best results.

Fully Cloud-Based Working

The Google Workspace project is still in progress. The entire organization of Altrecht now works with Chromebooks, Gmail, Calendar and Google Drive. In the upcoming months, more than 85% of the organization will make the transition to 'fully cloud-based working', without local applications or Microsoft Office. Afterwards, we look step by step at how we can allow subsequent teams to make the switch. Everything for smart, simple, flexible and secure collaboration in the (Google) cloud!

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