Even with thousands of workers returning to the office over the last few months, video conferencing software remains as important and prevalent as ever. Google Meet is one of the best ways for you and your co-workers to plan, work together, and coordinate from anywhere in the world, and with Calendar integration, you can chart and track your meetings in one spot. If you're trying to organize your next big organization-wide video call, Meet's latest tools are perfect for getting everything prepared ahead of time.

Google already allowed users to set up breakout rooms as part of a Calendar listing ahead of time. These pre-call controls are becoming even more granular with this week's update. You can now select and set co-hosts for a meeting before the call, ensuring that team members are ready to go before anyone jumps into the room. This option should stop organizers from spending the first couple of minutes of any meeting messing around in settings, letting the call get on faster so everyone can resume their usual daily duties.

In addition, meeting safety features can be enabled or disabled before the official start time, giving teachers and other leaders the ability to use chat lock, present lock, and any other tool at their disposal.

Those moderation pre-settings are coming to all Google users, while co-host options will be available for Google Workspace Essentials, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Business Standard, Business Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, Education Plus, and Teaching and Learning Upgrade subscribers. These tools are on the graduated rollout plan, so look for them to reach every applicable account over the next two weeks.