Applicable packages
checkApplicable to all Symposium packages
This article is for event organizers. If you are an event participant, please see our Resources for Participants section.

Symposium's Tables feature enables you to easily facilitate synchronous activities such as networking, small group discussions, and more using inbuilt video conferencing capabilities.

This feature is available for you to use under the Live Sessions tab of your event management page and, once configured, is accessible by all attendees who register to participate in your event. It is available across all our packages, with different usage limitations depending on the credits provided per event in your specific plan. 

Overview

Under Live Sessions > Add Time Slot > Tables of your event management dashboard on Symposium you can create sessions and subsequently add tables under each session. Each table can be configured to allow between two and eight seats. You will be allowed to schedule up to a certain number of hours of video interaction with the Tables feature depending on the package you have purchased. To increase the limit on the hours, please contact [email protected] to purchase add-ons (+25,000 credits for $29, plus transaction fee). 

 

Registered event participants can navigate to Live Sessions at the session time to see each of the tables set up (as shown below). They can simply click to join any table with open seats to interact with others. Participants can come and go freely between these tables for the duration of the session.


In this article, we will walk you through all of the steps to create and host Tables sessions as part of your Symposium event.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Step 1: Create a session

Under the Live Sessions tab on your event management dashboard, you can create a new Session by clicking the “Add Time Slot” button in the top right hand corner of the left column (highlighted below).

You will then be prompted to add a title, a date, a beginning and ending time, and a brief description of the session. Be sure to click “Save” when you have finished filling out all of the required fields.

 

You can edit the detail at any time up until the session is live, at which point the tables for that session will become accessible to event registrants and you will no longer be able to modify the session information (nor the tables under the session). 

Step 2: Add tables to your session


Now, you can start adding tables to your session! Once you have successfully created a session, select the session card that you would like to add tables to from the left-hand column. The session card will become highlighted when selected, as shown below. Then, click the “Add Table” button in the upper right hand corner of the right column to create tables in your session.


You can provide a table name (this can be specific, like a topic or subject, or generic like ‘Table 1’) and select the number of seats you would like the table to have (up to 8 seats). The number of seats represents the number of people who can simultaneously interact at the table.


While there is technically no limit to the number of sessions you can create, or to the number of Tables that you can add to a session, there is a limit to the amount of live video streaming you may host on Symposium via Tables, which is based on the number of credits per event in your purchase plan (add-ons available to increase limit). This number of credits that you have planned as you set up sessions and tables will be reported to you in the top right hand corner of the page, as you can see in the image above. 


To illustrate how credits and live video streaming works via Tables, please use the calculator found in the top right corner to plan out how you would like to use your credits. You can also refer to the Calculating Credits article to learn more about the calculator. 


Once your sessions and tables are configured, you can click the Live Sessions link in the header of your event to see a preview of the auto-generated sessions schedule and the tables for the first session.

Step 3: Inviting participants


Once you have added all of the sessions and their respective tables via your event management page, you are all set to facilitate live interactions via Tables within your event on Symposium!

 

Please note that attendees must register for your event to join a table. We recently added an option to the Access Settings page of the event management dashboard to allow organizers to make their Live Sessions public (i.e. accessible to public viewers who have not signed up for a Symposium account and registered for the event); however, please note that this option does not apply to Tables and registration is required.

 

To register for an event, attendees will have to sign up for a Symposium account first. Once they’ve verified their email and logged in, they will be prompted to confirm their registration before they can enter the event (if it’s a private event) or when they try to access a Symposium Table under Live Sessions (if it’s a public event). Under the Live Sessions tab, participants will be able to view the schedule for the sessions you have planned, but they will not be able to access the tables until a session begins (as indicated in the image below).

Step 4: Managing your Tables sessions as they go live

Once a live session begins, registrants will be able to click Live Sessions, select the specific session of Tables they would like to participate in, find an open seat at a table, and click the “Join Table” seat to join the table. If a table is full, the “Join Table” button will be deactivated and a message will display saying there are no seats available. When joining an open table, they will be prompted to allow access to their device’s camera and microphone and they will have 30 seconds to preview their audio/video and decide if they want to join the table or leave, as shown below.

 

If a participant decides to join the table, they will be added to our inbuilt video conference room with the other participants “seated” at that table. This will be hosted directly on Symposium as shown below. Participants do not need to download any third-party applications; the live video is hosted directly on Symposium within the browser.



Participants can stay at this table until the session ends (per the scheduled time shown at the top of the video conferencing interface), choose to leave the table and join another one, or navigate to another part of the event.


Participants can also share their screen at the table where they are seated. Any participant at the table can share their screen, and only one table participant can share at a time.





When there are 5 minutes left in a session, a countdown will appear on the video conferencing interface under the heading so participants are aware that they should wrap up.