Understanding and Optimizing Bot Join Times

When using Recall.ai bots to join video calls, you may notice differences in join times across various meeting platforms. This article explains these differences and provides strategies to ensure your bot is punctual.

Join Time Variations Across Platforms

Join times can vary between different meeting platforms due to differences in meeting platform clients.

The Zoom Native bot in particular uses a native SDK implementation under the hood, which allows for near-immediate joining times.

Strategies to Optimize Join Times

1. Use Scheduled Bots

Scheduled bots join meetings faster than ad-hoc bots because they can pre-boot and load necessary resources preemptively.

Since a vast majority of meetings are scheduled before they occur, you should use scheduled bots when possible.

2. Adjust the join_at Parameter

When scheduling bots, you can set the join_at parameter to account for potential join delays.

As a good rule of thumb, if you want to ensure your bots are punctual at the exact meeting start time, set the join_at value to 20-30 seconds before the actual meeting start time.

Ongoing Improvements

Recall.ai is continuously working on optimizing bot join times across all supported platforms. While significant improvements have already been made, further optimizations may be more incremental due to platform-specific constraints.