Product update: personal pods & hybrid working

August might be an easy-going month for some, but not for us at C4 HQ! We’ve put out two big new features this month, as well as plenty of other upgrades.

1. Personal pod

Anyone who has logged in to Connect4 over the past couple of weeks will have seen a shiny new ‘personal pod’ sitting in their pod list. The personal pod is a new concept, purposefully designed for three use-cases:

Personal pod
Personal pod

A. Ad-hoc catch-ups

We talk a lot about the importance of creating an agenda, making comprehensive meeting notes and setting clear actions. But, we concede that there are some meetings where those just aren’t needed. Quick check-ins to talk about the weekend can lose their human touch when you’re militantly trying to stick to a predefined schedule…

B. Meeting prospective clients

For exploratory conversations with potential new clients, the personal pod acts as a handy drop-in space. New clients don’t need to register to access video calls on Connect4, so they can go straight into your personal pod with just one click. The link for your personal pod is unique to you and never changes, so this means you can use it with scheduling tools such as Calendly.

C. New and free users

Every single user on Connect4 gets their own personal pod. This means that if you are not part of a paid organisation, and therefore can’t create your own pods, you can still use your personal pod to host meetings. Personal pods don’t have the full feature set of regular pods — you can’t make meeting notes, share resources or assign actions to others. But you can still set an agenda, make private notes and assign actions to yourself.

2. In-person meetings (hybrid working)

Lots of our clients — like many organisations today — operate a hybrid style of working. They mostly meet their clients over video calls (to reap the many benefits of this way of working) but will still meet up in-person once or twice a year. We’ve added a new ‘in-person’ mode for meetings on Connect4. When you schedule a meeting, you can now select this option to give you all the benefits of using Connect4 for meetings, without the video chat. You can still set an agenda, make notes and set actions, just as you would on a video call. 

This new mode is also handy if your client isn’t able to access a computer — perhaps they’re on speakerphone in a car. You can now use Connect4 whilst on your phone! 

In-person meetings
In-person mode

3. Picture-in-picture button

Wouldn’t it be great if you could see who you’re talking to at the same time as sharing or viewing a screen share? Well, now you can! We’ve added a handy little picture-in-picture button to the top right corner of each video screen. This pops the video out, over the top of your browser window, ready to be repositioned wherever you need it.

Picture-in-picture mode
Picture-in-picture mode

4. Re-assign captain

Handy for when a new team member takes over an existing client account, you can now easily select someone else to act as the captain of a pod. As long as someone has been added as a team member to your organisation, you’ll be able to hover over their name and select ‘Make captain’.

Re-assign captain
Re-assign captain

Onward and upwards

We’ve also made a pretty big update to the sign-up process for new users. People who register for the first time should find it even easier to get started. Also, in addition to everything above, we’ve released a tonne of smaller improvements and bug fixes. As always, do get in touch with anything ideas you’d like to see in Connect4. Drop us an email at [email protected] or reach out on LinkedIn!

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Rory Macrae

Rory is Connect4’s Head of Design. He leads the design of the app as well as all things related to the Connect4 brand.

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