Video conferencing and team chat are the meeting and messaging parts of an office communication system: video calls with screen sharing, and chat channels in which teams write to each other. Today they usually come in the same subscription and the same app as the cloud phone system. The bundle is called unified communications.
How does a video meeting work? Each participant's app captures the camera and the microphone, compresses them into data and sends the data over the internet to the provider's servers. The voice and video travel as data, as in VoIP. A server called a media server receives every participant's stream and forwards it to the others. It does not combine the videos. Each participant's app receives the streams and arranges them on the screen. For a person on a weak connection, the server sends a smaller, lower-quality copy of each video, so that the meeting does not freeze for that person.
For instance, consider a leather-goods exporter in Kanpur preparing a new order. On Monday at 4 p.m., seven people join one meeting: two merchandisers in the office, a production manager on the factory floor using her phone, a buyer's representative in Bengaluru, and three colleagues from home. One merchandiser shares her screen to show the fabric samples and the shipping dates. Halfway through, the production manager's phone moves to a weaker signal. The server lowers her video quality, and her voice continues clearly. After the meeting, the recording and a summary of the decisions appear in the team's chat channel. Questions that come up later are answered there, in writing, instead of in another meeting.
The chat channels hold a running record for each team or each order. Files and decisions stay next to the conversation about them. Many teams also connect the chat to project management software, so that a task agreed in the meeting appears on the project plan.
Meeting rooms use special equipment: cameras that follow the speaker, ceiling microphones and a large screen. This is covered in conference room AV systems. The meeting summary uses the same technology as call transcription and AI summaries on phone calls.
The same video technology appears outside the office. A doctor sees a patient through a telemedicine app, and tutors run live classes for students. These products use the same kind of media servers, built into their own apps.
A video meeting differs from a phone call in one important way. A phone call can reach any phone number. A video meeting reaches only people who have the app, or a web browser, and the meeting link. Most services also let a person join the sound of a meeting by dialling a phone number, but without the video.