2019 is winding down, and the VirBELA developers at the North Pole have been working hard to make sure the VirBELA community gets a few gifts before 2020 is upon us. Well, they don't really live at the North Pole - in fact most live in sunny San Diego - but let's dive in and unwrap some of the new features!
Customizing Board Rooms in Team Suites
We noticed that people enjoy the ability to customize the small office layouts within Team Suites (learn more about this in our last update), so we brought some of that layout control to the larger board rooms. Previously, the board room only had the large table layout, but now you can change it so it has different tables or no tables at all. This is all part of an ongoing effort to further enable remote teams to make their Team Suite just right for a wide variety of interactions.
Do You Want to Build a Snowman? We Do.
You'll notice some holiday decor outside in the VirBELA Open Campus, with some friendly snowpeople and a large holiday tree outside one of the buildings. You may even notice some snow flurries scattered about, but don't worry - your avatar will stay warm. If you just want the typical Open Campus look, just head into any of the buildings and they will look the same as before.
View + Use Team Suite Dashboard Within Open Campus
If you're a Team Suite owner (check out Team Suites here), you've probably seen the Admin Dashboard you have available to you at this page. Now, you can access that Dashboard right from within VirBELA itself. This helps to keep things all in one place so that you don't need to juggle multiple tabs/applications in order to use your Dashboard and VirBELA at the same time.
To access this, there's a link to "Your Subscriptions" inside the Campus Hub, which you can access by clicking the VirBELA swirl icon near the top right of the screen. See how it's done:
Learning Center in the Glass Office
There are a few ways you can access learning videos to help you explore the ins and outs of the VirBELA Open Campus and Team Suites (one example is this website), but now inside the Open Campus we're setting up an Info Center inside the Glass Office Building across from the Auditorium. We'll be building out more features and content in this space, but for starters we've got a few videos displayed in there that you can check out to help you on your learning journey.
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Shake Hands
When you click on your avatar's name in the top left, a new animation option that you'll see is "Shake Hands". If you do this animation and someone standing near you does it as well, you'll have a nice mutual handshake.
Beyond being playful, animations like this make interactions in VirBELA more powerful and memorable for remote teams. "Shaking hands" is the kind of thing that is difficult or awkward over video chat, but with avatar interaction in VirBELA it makes good sense and feels natural. Please take it for a try with your colleagues!
Want to check our the VirBELA Open Campus? Download and access it for free here. If you have any questions, please let us know. We all wish you a happy holiday season!
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