Frequently Asked Questions

Meetings are central to many people's work day. Yet, most experience their meetings to be boring, inefficient, or exhausting. At Verbally, we work on making meetings more productive and fun. We are an early stage tech start-up based in Berlin (pssst, that's some of us with Verbally below 😉). Our aim is to improve communication and well-being through nudges and healthy habit forming. We offer a meeting assistant to make your meetings more productive and fun for. We are compatible with Google Meet will be expanding to Zoom & Microsoft Teams soon.

Simply sign up on our homepage with your work email address and we'll send you an invite with all the details on how to start using Verbally today. ...But why can't you just tell me now?! We need you to accept our terms & conditions with your email address before we can provide you with the access details. You can be assured that we do not charge any costs for the service and we will never sell any of your data, including email address, to third-parties i.e. no spam emails. 😉

We currently support Google Meet! You can find the quick steps to get started on our homepage. If you're using Zoom, Microsoft Teams or another platform, then you can sign up for our waitlist here. We'll message you as soon as we're ready for you to test Verbally in your meetings!

An agenda in your meetings helps you and your participants to: 🎯 Stay Focused: An agenda visible in the meeting creates focus and ensures you do not forget anything ✍ Be Prepared: An agenda in the invite allows participants to prepare ahead of the meeting or to tell you if some point is missing 📆 Plan Ahead: Putting the agenda into the invite ensures you plan your meeting, e.g. to double-check the duration, who to invite and if this needs to be a meeting at all Lacking inspiration? Check out an example of our quick stand-up agenda below:

To edit your agenda, change the description in the calendar invite of the meeting. Verbally works best with bullet-point or numbered lists and you can edit your agenda topics before or during the meeting on the fly. These changes can take up to 5 seconds for them to take effect. Pro Tip: When you’re finished updating and click to save, you can choose Don’t Send to avoid participants getting multiple emails.

The Goal feature allows you to set one main goal for the meeting. It is the one accomplishment you would like to make during that meeting for it to be considered a success. The Goal feature displays this Goal prominently on the assistant’s screen during the meeting.

To set a Goal just start the meeting description with “Goal: [insert goal here]”. Any new points after the Goal will be displayed as agenda points. See the below image as an example:

YES but we do advise sticking to just one as you’ll be able to achieve one goal within a fixed time period much more likely than setting multiple goals and achieving none of them. Think of it as Radical Focus! 🎯 To set multiple goals, use the following format in the meeting description:

We will send out a heads-up email to your participants prior to their first meeting using Verbally. This aims to help everyone present in the meeting to better understand what Verbally is and who the extra participants are in your meeting prior to the start of it. This means that you can spend less time introducing our service and more time on the actual important meeting topics! Any further questions just shoot us a message at hello@verbally.io

You can find all information about our pricing plans here.

For Google Meet The default joining mode for Verbally is to present the agenda screen, this is then shown in full-screen to all participants. When someone else shares their screen, they will then be the prominent screen to all users. After they stop sharing the assistant screen will remain in the minimised screen. To minimise the assistant screen: simply share your screen and then stop sharing. To maximise the assistant screen: simply pin Verbally's screen with the agenda. This is then maximised but only for those that pin it e.g. it needs to be done individually. For Zoom: If you are the host, you can use Spotlight for Everyone to enlarge the Verbally screen and turn it off to return to normal mode. This will change Verbally's screen for ALL meeting participants. If you are not the host, you can simply pin Verbally's screen with the agenda. This is then maximised but only for those that pin it e.g. it needs to be done individually.

At Verbally, we believe in meetings not monologues! So we created the active speaker timer. The active speaker timer works for all meetings that the Verbally assistant has been invited to. During your meeting, the assistant checks if someone is talking for an extended period. If so, it shows their total speaking time on screen, as a friendly nudge in case they were not aware. Currently this feature only works for fully remote meetings, where every participant joins separately to the meeting. You can see the active speaker in action below:

If you don’t want to have the active speaker timer in your meeting, as well as the second assistant, just follow these instructions: 1. At least 10 mins before the meeting add #nospeakertimer to the description of the calendar invite. 2. The presenting assistant will only join that meeting and you will no longer have the second assistant nor the active speaker timer feature in your meeting. Additionally, if the meeting has started already, you can opt to remove the second assistant from your meeting. See the image below on how the assistant looks: See the example below for our recommended format for adding the hashtag to your meeting description: For further questions please reach out us at hello@verbally.io

To add a time for each topic, just include the number of minutes you’d like to allocate for that topic followed by min, mins or minutes. You will then see a sand-timer next to the current agenda topic, which will be highlighted. The sand-timer will start for the first agenda point that has a time allocated to it. This means that, for example, if the first agenda point doesn’t have a time allocated to it, but the second one is timed, then the timer will begin for the second one as soon as the meeting starts. See an example of the topic timer in use below:

The Goal is the overall aim of the meeting that you’d like to achieve. The Agenda contains specific topics to discuss during the meeting, which you may or not allocate time to using our topic timer. You can think of the agenda items during the meeting as building blocks to reaching the overall Goal and then check-in with your participants at the end of the meeting to evaluate whether the Goal has been achieved.

No, not at all! This is highly encouraged as it’s shown to be best practice for high-performing meetings to have a clear goal, to bring alignment before and during the meeting and to assess whether the meeting was a success at the end. However you don’t have to set a Goal if you feel it’s not necessary for the particular meeting. If you don’t start the meeting description with “Goal:” then each agenda point will just be displayed as usual.

If you’d like to have a custom background for your company, you can write to Nathan at nathan@verbally.io. We will send you a template for your design and we will be able to change the background for your company after you provide the assets. See the example of one of our happy clients, Omio, below: Note: Currently this just works in Google Meet but we are expanding the feature to Zoom shortly.

Tired of having to invite Verbally to each and every one of your meetings? Verbally can now join all of your internal company meetings by default rather than having to invite it each time! Simply sign in to Google to share your calendar with Verbally. Verbally will then check for any new & upcoming meetings and add itself to the invite, so that you automatically get Verbally's support! To get started, head over to our Auto-Invite page and follow the steps for the Google Sign In flow. Important! You must tick ALL the check-boxes for this to work properly, otherwise you will receive an error. The first two check-boxes are ticked by default by Google, but you need to opt-in to the final check-box, as that contains the permissions we need to access your calendar and hence add Verbally to your meetings. Don't want Verbally in a specific meeting? Simply uninvite Verbally as a participant in the calendar event or kick it out during the meeting, we won't be offended 😉 Want to remove the Auto Invite setting? Head over to your Google Account settings to see an overview of the applications that you have granted permission to in the past and revoke Verbally's access rights. Note: If you do not have a Google account then unfortunately this feature is not yet available for you but please send us a message at hello@verbally.io with the email account provider you are using.

Did you invite the assistant to a meeting that starts right now? In that case, it takes up to 5 minutes to join meetings on Google Meet. Sorry for that, we know it's annoying but for now you'll need a little patience. Also, it only joins meetings while they happen. Even an automatic assistant does not have the time to wait all day in a meeting room. 😉 Did you invite the assistant to an "Instant Meeting"? Unfortunately, Verbally doesn't yet support Instant Meetings in Google Meet yet either, so it can only join meetings for which there is a calendar event for. If none of that applies to you and the assistant is still not joining: you might have found a bug! Please contact hello@verbally.io and claim a gift voucher for your bug report.

We have a bug bounty program! Simply send any issues you have over to us at hello@verbally.io and we will investigate the issue. If this does turn out to be a bug, we will send you an Amazon voucher as a small thank you.

We currently only support Meetings via Google Meet! You can find the quick steps to get started on our homepage. If you're using Zoom, Microsoft Teams or another platform, then you can sign up for our waitlist here. We'll message you as soon as we're ready for you to test Verbally in your meetings! If you're still stuck, please feel free to send us a message at hello@verbally.io and we'll try to get you up & running as soon as possible!

Tired of having to invite Verbally to each and every one of your meetings? Verbally can now join all of your internal company meetings by default rather than having to invite it each time! Simply sign in to Google to share your calendar with Verbally. Verbally will then check for any new & upcoming meetings and add itself to the invite, so that you automatically get Verbally's support! To get started, head over to our Auto Invite page and follow the steps for the Google Sign In flow. Important! You must tick ALL the check-boxes for this to work properly, otherwise you will receive an error. The first two check-boxes are ticked by default by Google, but you need to opt-in to the final check-box, as that contains the permissions we need to access your calendar and hence add Verbally to your meetings. Don't want Verbally in a specific meeting? Simply uninvite Verbally as a participant in the calendar event or kick it out during the meeting, we won't be offended 😉 Want to remove the Auto Join setting? Head over to your Google Account settings to see an overview of the applications that you have granted permission to in the past and revoke Verbally's access rights. Note: If you do not have a Google account then unfortunately this feature is not yet available for you but please send us a message at hello@verbally.io with the email account provider you are using.

To connect your calendar with Verbally, you need to sign in with your Google account. Note: If you do not have a Google account then unfortunately this feature is not yet available for you but please send us a message at hello@verbally.io with the email account provider you are using. After signing in, on the next page you will see three permissions required in order for us to be able to add Verbally automatically to your internal company meetings. Important! You must tick ALL the check-boxes for this to work properly, otherwise you will receive an error. The first two check-boxes are ticked by default by Google, but you need to opt-in to the final check-box, as that contains the permissions we need to access your calendar and hence add Verbally to your meetings. If you do not tick all check-boxes the process will fail and will result in the error message. If you're still facing an issue after this, please feel free out to our PM at nathan@verbally.io and we'll do our best to get you up & running ASAP!

If you don't want Verbally in a specific meeting, you can simply remove or uninvite Verbally as a participant in the calendar event or if the meeting has started already, you can kick it out during the meeting, we won't be offended 😉 If you want to disable Verbally from automatically joining your meetings all together, then you can head over to your Google Account settings to see an overview of the applications that you have granted permission to in the past and revoke Verbally's access rights (see image below): This applies to all users that have connected their Google Calendars with Verbally.

Agenda Reminders is a new Verbally feature that allows you to outsource good meeting habits. After opting in, we will check for any meetings in your company that do not have an agenda, and send the organiser an email reminder as well as some tips on what makes an agenda great. Each time a new meeting is set-up without an agenda, we will send out the organiser a reminder, so that you don’t have to. This is an invite only feature that is the early stages of testing, to sign up for the waitlist please email nathan@verbally.io with the Subject: Agenda Reminders.

After signing up and stating your preferences in the form that you receive, we will send out email reminders to remind meeting organisers in your company. When turned on, we will email the relevant people when a meeting is organized regarding the specific rules of that nudge if they are not adhered to, prior to the meeting. We will only be able to send out nudges to meetings which we have access to, either via being invited to them or being able to access information about them from a calendar that is shared with us. To increase the reach and effectiveness of agenda reminders in your company we recommend making use of our Verbally Invite to your team members, when we will send an email invitation to specific users that you’d like to start using Verbally

Currently we only support english in the email nudges. We will expand to other languages after the beta program. If you have a preference for which languages you’d like to be supported, please let us know in the feedback survey or email our PM at nathan@verbally.io.

You can find our survey here, additionally you also write to our PM at nathan@verbally.io with any ad-hoc feedback you have.

No problem! Just update the form page and we’ll be notified of the changes in your configurations.

Simply send a message to our PM at nathan@verbally.io with the Subject: Agenda Reminders and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

Just head over to "link" and login via Google with your work email address that you’re using Verbally with. If you don’t have a Google workspace with your work account then unfortunately this won’t work for you. You can request it here "survey link" and we’ll take this account when prioritising our next features, thanks!

Currently you toggle the settings on or off for two features: First Smile: The funny welcome gif you see when you first enter and speak in a Verbally meeting Speaker Timer: A timer which displays on screen when someone has talking continually for an extended period of time. Which feature would you like to be able to customise next? Just let us know here "feedback link"

The settings will be applied to just Verbally meetings in which YOU are the organiser. They won’t impact the whole company or any other Verbally meetings which you are just a participant in.

The default settings for both the First Smile and the Speaker Timer will be ON. If you’d like to change this, just head to the settings back.

Yes of course! Simply toggle the feature setting back to ON and this will be effective for any upcoming or newly created meetings.

If you have any issues, you can provide feedback to us via the "survey link" or reach out to us directly at hello@verbally.io

Yes! And you'll get to decide which ones come first! We’ll be rolling out new feature settings continuously so if there’s any specific setting you’d like to see next just let us know here! "feedback link"

The browser extension is only available for Chrome at the moment and only supports Google Meet meetings. If you are using an alternative browser or platform and would like to use the extensions capabilities, please message us at hello@verbally.io

This extension allows you to quickly edit the agenda of the current meeting and quick-add the assistant to your meetings directly in your Google Calendar.

To install the browser extension please go to our chrome extension page and follow the instructions to add the extension to your browser. You will then see the quick-add button when creating new meetings in your calendar and clicking on existing events. During your meetings which Verbally attends you will see the Verbally icon in the bottom menu and from there can quickly edit the agenda.

Absolutely! We abide by all Google Chrome Store rules and regulations to ensure this is published safely and securely. The access rights we request enable only the features we are providing i.e. calendar access to display the quick-add button in your calendar and meeting access to display the quick-edit button in your meeting

To uninstall the browser extension, please go to the chrome extension store and click remove from browser.

We are working on a few different feature enhancements to be released later this year, but please let us know what YOU would like to be able to do with the browser extension. This sort of feedback is essential for us to make sure we’re working on the most important topics for you, our customers! Let us know at hello@verbally.io. We look forward to reading through all of your ideas and feedback!

Oh no, we’re very sorry about this! Please write directly to Nathan at nathan@verbally.io with the problem(s) you experienced (plus any screenshots, these help a lot too!) and we’ll do our best to get you up & running in no time 🤝

Yes, your data is secure. At Verbally, we care about privacy of your data and are committed to protecting it. We do not access your video or audio for any of our services and therefore do not store any of this data. We process metadata from meetings (ie. those blue bubbles that appear next to your video if you speak) on the fly to be able to display certain features such as the active speaker timer but this is not stored in our servers. Of course, we do not sell your personal information to anyone. For more information see our stance on privacy in simple terms.

You do not create an account to use Verbally, you simply sign-up. Once you’ve stopped using Verbally (ie. you have no upcoming meetings with the assistant in your calendar and are no longer sharing your calendar), there is no more usage data in our database. If you additionally wish to delete all contact information (e.g. if you unsubscribed to our newsletter or any emails that you might have had to send to us), please send an email with the Subject: Deletion Request to hello@verbally.io. Break-ups are hard but we can try to sweeten the blow...If you do decide to leave us, please feel free to be as brutally honest in your email with any feedback on how we can improve and we'll send you over an Amazon voucher for your wise words. Best break-up ever? 🥲

If you're question isn't properly answered here, then please shoot us over an email to hello@verbally.io and we'll be sure to get back to you as soon as we can!