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Why didn't Read join my meeting?

Updated

If you've had any trouble with the Read Assistant not joining a meeting, this article should help you figure out why it didn't join and how to ensure it will join in the future. If after going through this article, you still aren't sure why Read didn't join your meeting, please contact Read support for assistance.

There are a number of reasons why Read may not have joined. We'll start by going over some of the most basic requirements for Read to automatically join your scheduled meetings, and then go into the less common scenarios. If you're having an issue when trying to manually add Read to a meeting, you can skip below. If the Read Assistant did join your call, but you didn't receive a report for the meeting, see this article instead.

Didn't automatically join

Core requirements

The basic requirements for Read to automatically join a scheduled meeting are:

  1. The calendar that your meeting is on needs to be connected to Read.
    • Read supports Google Calendar, Zoom Calendar, and Microsoft Outlook (Microsoft 365 only, not Exchange).
    • After connecting your calendar, you should see your upcoming meetings listed on the Calendar page.
    • For more details, see How do I connect my calendar to Read?
  2. Your meeting needs to show up on your Calendar page.
    • If you have multiple calendars in your connected calendar account, make sure you're syncing all of the calendars that you want.
    • If Read can't find a valid video conferencing link on your calendar event, it won't appear on your Calendar page by default (you can show them using the drop down menu up top that says "Has video conferencing").
    • The currently supported video conferencing platforms are Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet.
  3. The meeting needs to have "Add Read?" turned on in advance

If all three of the above criteria are met, then Read should try to join your meeting, and if it fails to generate a report for some reason, the meeting should be listed on your Incomplete reports page along with an explanation of what went wrong.

Other potential issues

Even if you've followed the above steps, there are some relatively less common problems you may encounter:

  • You may see the meeting on your Incomplete reports page with a message like "Read not admitted to the meeting within 10 minutes of scheduled start time" or "Read left after no participants joined the meeting within 10 minutes of scheduled start time."
    • This will happen if nobody joins the meeting within 10 minutes after it was supposed to start.
    • Even if people do join within 10 minutes, the "Read not admitted..." case will still happen if the people who can admit Read don't notice (or choose to ignore) Read's request to join.
    • Note that Read doesn't always need to be admitted; the video conferencing settings will determine whether uninvited guests can join on their own, and if not, who is allowed to admit them.
    • Some platform-specific settings can make it more difficult or outright prevent Read from being able to join:
  • "Add Read?" may not be turned on by default, even though your auto-join preferences are enabled for it to be. This can occur for a few reasons:
    • If your own email address is not listed on the calendar event as an invited guest, and you did not create the meeting yourself, then Read will not turn on by default. Read doesn't assume it should join a meeting that you aren't invited to.
    • Similarly, if the meeting only comes from a shared calendar (like a shared group calendar in Google) then Read will also never turn on by default. 
    • If it's a recurring meeting (part of a series) and Read had previously failed to join and generate a report for at least 3 consecutive instances, then the "Add Read?" setting is automatically turned off going forward.
    • In all of the above cases, you should be able to turn "Add Read?" back on manually from the Calendar page.

If Read failed to join your meeting automatically, you may want to manually add it to the meeting. While this is usually very reliable, there can be issues that prevent this from working as well, so read on below if this has happened to you.

Couldn't manually add

There are a few different ways to manually add Read to a meeting, and that article lists common issues associated with each method, so it is worth reviewing if you're having trouble. All of these methods can also face the same issue as above, if the meeting host or someone else in the meeting needs to let Read join the call and doesn't. If you get the error "Read not admitted to the meeting within 10 minutes of scheduled start time" see the first set of bullets under Other potential issues above.

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