The COVID-19 pandemic that erupted in 2020 forced businesses across the world to adopt virtual meetings. With many people working from home, software platforms like Zoom and Teams became ubiquitous, but their widespread use also revealed many weaknesses and limitations. While technologies for virtual meetings have existed for decades, these technologies have advanced significantly in recent years, and today range from audioconference facilities to telepresence rooms with high-resolution video and sophisticated virtual presence features. The available alternatives differ significantly in costs, complexity and capabilities, and choosing the most effective technology for each meeting setting is not always easy. This is important, since after the pandemic, virtual meetings will move from being a necessity brought on by the pandemic to being a widely accepted alternative to traditional face-to-face meetings. Consequently, the questions of when and how to meet virtually will become even more significant. In this article, we describe a decision-making framework for choosing when and how to meet virtually, based on matching the appropriate communication capabilities with various meeting objectives and taking into account meeting size and duration. The framework is based on extensive empirical research conducted in partnership with several major U.S. and European companies.

2020 年爆发的 COVID-19 大流行迫使世界各地的企业采用虚拟会议。随着许多人在家工作，Zoom 和 Teams 等软件平台变得无处不在，但它们的广泛使用也暴露了许多弱点和局限性。虽然虚拟会议技术已经存在了几十年，但这些技术近年来取得了长足的进步，今天的范围从音频会议设施到具有高分辨率视频和复杂虚拟存在功能的远程呈现室。可用的替代方案在成本、复杂性和功能方面存在显着差异，为每个会议环境选择最有效的技术并不总是那么容易。这很重要，因为在大流行之后，虚拟会议将从大流行带来的必需品转变为被广泛接受的传统面对面会议的替代方案。因此，何时以及如何进行虚拟会议的问题将变得更加重要。在本文中，我们描述了一个决策框架，用于选择何时以及如何进行虚拟会议，基于将适当的沟通能力与各种会议目标相匹配，并考虑会议规模和持续时间。该框架基于与几家主要的美国和欧洲公司合作进行的广泛实证研究。我们描述了一个决策框架，用于选择何时以及如何进行虚拟会议，基于将适当的沟通能力与各种会议目标相匹配并考虑会议规模和持续时间。该框架基于与几家主要的美国和欧洲公司合作进行的广泛实证研究。我们描述了一个决策框架，用于选择何时以及如何进行虚拟会议，基于将适当的沟通能力与各种会议目标相匹配并考虑会议规模和持续时间。该框架基于与几家主要的美国和欧洲公司合作进行的广泛实证研究。