Customize your Group Lobby Settings

This article applies to the following role permissions: ConexED Administrator - Director - Group Manager

Learn how to customize your Group Lobby in ConexED to meet the specific needs of your group and enhance the overall experience for both students and staff members.

Accessing Group Lobby Settings

1. Click on the Scheduling tab on the left-hand navigation bar and select your Group

2. Click on the "Settings" tab located at the top of the page

3. Within your Group Settings page, you'll find three additional tabs: Main, Scheduling, and Lobby. Click on the "Lobby" tab

Understanding Your Lobby Settings

Here's a breakdown of the customizable options available within the Lobby Settings:

• Group Lobby Welcome Message: When students enter your Group's Lobby, it's important to greet them with a personalized message. This can include important information or instructions about the Group's purpose or upcoming events. By customizing this message, you can make students feel welcomed and informed right from the start.
• Group Lobby Locked Message: In certain situations, you may need to lock the Lobby to prevent individuals from joining. When the Lobby is locked, it's helpful to have a message displayed to inform those attempting to join. You can provide instructions or let them know when the Lobby will be accessible again. This will help manage expectations and minimize any confusion.
• Shared Direct Messages: If you want multiple moderators to be able to interact with a student simultaneously, you can enable the Shared Direct Messages feature. This allows all moderators in the Group Lobby to see and respond to any Direct Messages sent to a student. It promotes collaboration and ensures efficient communication between staff members and students.
• Allow Lobby Chat: Depending on your Group's needs, you can choose to enable or disable the Lobby Chat feature. Enabling it allows both Guests and moderators to send chat messages within the Lobby, fostering real-time discussions and engagement. Disabling it, on the other hand, may be useful in situations where you want to limit communication to appointments or specific channels.
• Show Schedule Appointment Link: If you want to make it easy for students to schedule appointments with moderators, you can enable the Show Schedule Appointment Link feature. This adds a link to the Group's appointment scheduler in the Lobby, ensuring that students have quick access to book time with staff members even when no moderators are currently available.
• Show Group Cards on Locked Screen: To provide additional information or resources to individuals attempting to join the Lobby while it is locked, you can enable the Show Group Cards on Locked Screen feature. 
• Show Lobby Link on Student Dashboard: To enhance accessibility and convenience for students, you can enable the Show Lobby Link on Student Dashboard feature. This adds the Lobby link for your Group to students' dashboards, making it easily accessible with just a click. Students can quickly join the Lobby and engage with staff members without navigating through multiple pages.

Remember to save your changes after customizing your settings. Once saved, these adjustments will take effect immediately!

Tips From Our Team

Our Lobby settings are highly customizable and provide you with a number of options to enhance your communication with students. Depending on your specific needs, you may want to consider the following factors when configuring your Lobby Settings: 

• When the "Shared Direct Messages" setting is enabled for a Group, all moderators have the ability to chat with students in the Lobby. As a result, if a student clicks on the Knock on Door button on a specific staff member's ConexED card in the Student Support Directory, they may not receive a response from that particular staff member. Additionally, if the student had previously engaged in a Lobby Chat with another member of the same group and the chat was not marked as a meeting, the previous messages will still be visible in the chat window even when clicking on the Knock on Door button from a different staff member's card. 
• If Faculty/Staff members choose to disable their "Schedule a Meeting" button on their ConexED card, students will not be able to schedule a meeting with them from a locked Lobby if the "Show Group Cards on Locked Screen" setting is enabled. However, it is important to note that a Group would also need to disable the "Show Schedule Appointment Link" setting in order to hide the Group Scheduler link and prevent students from scheduling an appointment from an unlocked Lobby.

An extra tip to enhance your Group Lobby experience: you can add a picture to both your Lobby Welcome and Lobby Locked Messages. It's a great way to personalize your messages and make them more visually appealing for students. Follow the steps below:

1. Open the desired image and right-click on it. You can search for an image using Google or another external source, or choose one from your own device. Here's an example of how it would appear when you open a .png file on a Mac:

2. Navigate back to your Group Lobby Settings and use a keyboard shortcut to paste the image into the space where you enter your Group Lobby Welcome or Group Lobby Locked Message. If you are using a Mac device use the  keyboard shortcut, and if you are using a Windows device use the keyboard shortcut:

To resize the image within the message space, simply click and drag on any of the four corners of the image. This allows you to adjust the size according to your preferences.