Meetings

Meetings are video calls inside Pentos for face-to-face time with friends, teammates or the people in a shared chat. Unlike Huddles, a Meeting opens with a setup screen so you can check your camera and microphone before you join.

Plans

• Starting a Meeting: needs a paid plan (Plus or higher). On Free, clicking Meeting where no Meeting is running opens the Upgrade Your Plan window with the message “Sorry, only paid users can start Meetings.”
• Joining a Meeting: anyone in the conversation, channel or shared chat can join a Meeting someone else started, on any plan.
• Video: video is part of paid plans. Members on a paid plan join with their microphone and camera on. Members on Free join with their microphone on and their camera off.

Huddles are audio-only and available on every plan. See Subscription for plan details.

Where You Can Meet

• Direct messages: a call with the other person. A direct message with someone either of you has blocked is hidden from both of you, so neither of you can call there until the block is lifted. See What Blocking Does.
• Group chats: a call open to every member of the group.
• Channels: a call open to every member of the channel, including Viewers.
• Shared chats: a call open to everyone the chat is shared with. Calls only appear in a chat once it’s shared.

Each conversation, channel and shared chat has its own Meeting. If one is already running, starting a Meeting there joins it.

Starting a Meeting

1. Open the direct message, group chat, channel or shared chat.
2. Click the More button (+) at the top left.
3. Click the video camera button (tooltip Meeting).
4. The Meeting window opens on the setup screen. Preview your camera, turn your microphone and camera on or off, and pick your microphone, camera and speakers from the lists under the preview. On a paid plan you can also change the name others see in this Meeting in the Your name box under Joining as.
5. Click Join.

Your microphone starts switched on, and so does your camera on a paid plan. You can change either on the setup screen before you click Join. The first time, your browser may ask for permission to use them. If the call can’t connect, you’ll see an error such as “Sorry, we couldn’t join that call.”

Pentos announces the Meeting as soon as the window opens, even while you’re still on the setup screen:

• Activity message: a line such as “Alex Rivera started a meeting” appears in the direct message, group chat or channel. Shared chats don’t show call activity messages.
• Call alert: the other members are alerted so they can join (see below).

To back out from the setup screen without joining, click the close button (X) and confirm Leave. Everyone has already been alerted. If nobody else joined, the Meeting ends and Pentos posts “The meeting has ended” in the direct message, group chat or channel.

Joining a Meeting

• Call alert: when someone starts a Meeting, the other members who have Pentos open see a pop-up at the top of the screen, such as “Alex Rivera started a meeting”, with a green Join button and a red Ignore button. If Sounds is on in your Preferences, a ringtone plays until you choose. The pop-up stays until you click Join or Ignore. Click Join, or anywhere else on the pop-up, to go to the conversation and open the Meeting. In a shared chat, the alert goes to everyone who can open the chat, its owner included.
• Declining: in a direct message, or a chat shared between just the two of you, Ignore declines the call. The person calling you sees a note with your name, such as “Sam Taylor declined the meeting”, and their meeting ends straight away, as a declined phone call would, unless someone else has joined it by then. In a group chat, a channel or a chat shared with more people, Ignore only closes the pop-up.
• Join button: while a Meeting is running in the conversation, channel or shared chat you’re viewing, a green pulsing button with a video camera icon appears just below the More button. Hover over it to see Join, then click it.
• Meeting button: in Collab, the Meeting button in the More menu turns green and its tooltip changes to Join Meeting. Clicking Meeting anywhere a Meeting is running joins it, on any plan.

Everyone goes through the setup screen before entering, so you can check your camera and microphone first.

If you have the conversation open when someone joins the call, a short pop-up with a Join button also appears.

Call alerts appear only as pop-ups: they don’t add a badge or an entry to your Updates. If Pentos wasn’t open when the call started, look for the activity message or the green Join button.

A Meeting and a Huddle can run in the same place at the same time. When they do, the green Join button (and the green button in Collab’s More menu) shows only one of them. On Free, clicking Meeting in Collab may then open the upgrade window instead of joining, so join from the call alert if you still have it.

If the Meeting has ended by the time you click Join, you start a new one, which needs a paid plan.

During the Call

The Meeting window opens large, with a grid showing everyone in the call.

The controls along the bottom come from Cloudflare RealtimeKit:

• Microphone and camera: turn each on or off.
• Share Screen: share your screen, a window or a tab.
• Chat: send messages and files to everyone in the Meeting or to one person. Paid plans only. Meeting chat stays with the call and isn’t saved to the conversation.
• Polls: create and vote in quick polls. Paid plans only.
• Participants: see who’s in the Meeting.
• Settings: choose your camera, microphone and speakers.
• More: extra options such as full screen and picture-in-picture.
• Leave: Pentos asks you to confirm.

To shrink the call, click the minus button next to the Meeting title (see below).

Minimizing and Expanding

Click the minus button (tooltip Minimize), or press Escape, to shrink the Meeting into a small floating card in the bottom right corner. You stay in the call and keep hearing everyone while you move around Pentos, whether that’s Collab, Chats, Files or anywhere else. Drag the card to wherever suits you. If you minimize or press Escape while you’re still on the setup screen, you join the Meeting straight away, with your microphone on and, on a paid plan, your camera on.

The card shows the call’s name: the channel (as ”# channel-name”), the group or chat name, or “Private Meeting” in a direct message. If you joined from a call alert, it shows the alert’s text instead, such as “Alex Rivera started a meeting”. The card also has a mute button, a camera button (tooltip Camera off or Camera on) and a red Leave button. Your camera stays as it was when you minimized, so others can still see you; turn it off from the card if you step away.

To open the full window again, click the card’s title bar or its + button (tooltip Expand). You go straight back to the call.

Leaving and Ending a Meeting

To leave, click Leave in the Meeting window or on the floating card, or click the close button (X) at the top right of the window. Pentos asks “Leave Meeting?”. Click Leave to confirm or No to stay. Leaving turns off your microphone and camera.

Leaving only removes you. The Meeting carries on for everyone else, and there’s no button that ends it for everyone.

A Meeting ends when the last person leaves. Pentos then posts “The meeting has ended” in the direct message, group chat or channel, and the green Join button goes away. The next Meeting there starts fresh and alerts everyone again.

Use Leave rather than closing your browser tab. Pentos may not register that a Meeting ended if the last person closes the tab, if the last two people leave at the same moment, or if a Huddle is still running in the same place when the last person leaves the Meeting. Then no “has ended” message is posted, and the next Meeting there doesn’t send an activity message or call alerts. To fix it, start a Meeting there and click Leave while nobody else is in a Huddle or Meeting in that place. The next Meeting alerts everyone again.

One Call at a Time

You can be in only one Meeting or Huddle at a time. While you’re in a call, the Huddle and Meeting buttons are disabled everywhere with the tooltip Already in a call, and green Join buttons are hidden. Clicking Join on a call alert won’t join a second call either. To switch calls, leave your current one first.

How Meetings Differ From Huddles

Everything else works the same way: where you can start a call, how others are alerted, the activity messages, minimizing, leaving and the one-call-at-a-time rule.

Privacy and Security

• Who carries the call: Meetings run on Cloudflare RealtimeKit, which relays audio and video between participants over encrypted connections. Calls are not end-to-end encrypted.
• No recording: Pentos does not record Meetings.
• What Pentos shares to set up a call: your name, profile photo and Pentos account ID, so others can see who’s in the call, and a title for the call: the channel name, the group or chat name, or “Private Meeting” in a direct message.
• Meeting chat and polls: messages, files and polls inside a Meeting are handled by Cloudflare RealtimeKit. They aren’t saved to the conversation and aren’t covered by the encryption Pentos applies to Collab messages, so share anything you want to keep in the conversation itself.
• Who is told: activity messages and call alerts go only to the members of the conversation or channel, or the people who can open a shared chat.

See Security for how Pentos protects your data.

See Also

• Huddles for audio-only calls on any plan.
• Subscription to compare plans.
• Preferences to turn the call ringtone and other sounds on or off.