How To Setup A Bot To Attend Online Meetings On Your Behalf

I had early morning college and I didn’t like math enough to wake up at 6.30 am. So, like any half-witted teenager, I often requested my friend to put in false attendance on my behalf. Fast forward to today, and things aren’t so simple for the Tik-Tok generation. The pandemic forced schools and colleges to organise online classes and many institutions are continuing this trend. What hasn’t changed, however, is the timing. Kids still must get up early to attend online classes. As the saying goes, “Modern problems require modern solutions”, Peter Solimine has developed a bot dubbed Beulr to take your place in online classes. The name is a nod to the 80’s legendary slacker movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

According to the maker, Beulr is a cloud-based platform. It doesn’t require you to keep the laptop on during the lecture or conference. For instance, if you have an online class or seminar tomorrow morning, simply schedule it using Beulr’s web interface. The bot will attend the conference on its own while you’re fast asleep. For webinars where participant webcams are required, Beulr can loop your pre-recorded clip. While the bot comes across as a gag service, it does pack in some serious productivity tools. For starters, it can record the entire meeting for you. This way you can get up to speed even though you skipped the meeting. Moreover, the bot can transcribe the lecture, which helps students take notes.

The base tier of the service is completely free. It includes features such as video recording, transcription, and video looping. However, it is limited to 10 meetings per month. Pro tier gets you up to 90 meetings and Premium includes 200 meetings. If you wish to give it a shot, follow these simple steps. Please note that Beulr is not recommended for meetings where interaction is necessary.

• Head over to beulr.com and sign up for the service.
• Login and click on Dashboard to access all the features and settings.
• First up, set the time zone to avoid confusion later.

• Select your Meeting day from the calendar view. Fill in your event and display name. Select Start and end time.
• You can paste the meeting link received over an email or manually type in the meeting ID and password.

• Toggle the buttons at the end to record and transcribe the meeting.
• If you want to add your digital presence t the meeting, upload a 10MB video clip for looping.

As mentioned earlier, this service is cool and also has some serious functionality. However, it also has its fair share of limitations. As of this writing, Beulr is only compatible with Zoom. So, if your school, college, or organisation uses Google Meet, you’re out of luck.