How to Enable and Use Attendance Tracking Reports in Google Meet

Tracking participant attendance in large company all-hands meetings, university lectures, client webinars, and training workshops is often cumbersome. Manually taking roll calls or cross-referencing chat logs wastes valuable meeting time and is prone to human error. In Google Workspace, Google Meet includes a built-in Attendance Tracking feature that automatically logs participant names, verified email addresses, joining timestamps, exit times, and overall duration in an organised Google Sheets spreadsheet delivered directly to the meeting organiser.

Understanding how to enable attendance reports, interpret multi-session participant data, and manage administrative settings streamlines corporate governance and educational record-keeping.

Requirements and Google Workspace Plan Availability

Attendance tracking is an enterprise-grade management tool available across specific Google Workspace tiers:

• Supported Editions: Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, and Education Plus / Teaching and Learning Upgrade. (Standard personal Google accounts do not support automated attendance reports).
• Participant Threshold: Automatically generates for meetings with five or more participants, though organisers can explicitly enable tracking for smaller sessions.
• Host Controls: The meeting host or assigned co-hosts must enable attendance tracking before or during the call.

Enabling Attendance Tracking via Google Calendar Before a Meeting

The most reliable method to ensure attendance is recorded is enabling the setting when scheduling the event in Google Calendar:

1. Open calendar.google.com and create or edit a scheduled calendar event.
2. Ensure video conferencing is added by clicking Add Google Meet video conferencing.
3. Click the Video call options gear icon located next to the Meet link.
4. A settings modal opens. Select the Host controls tab from the left navigation panel.
5. Under Meeting activities, check the box labelled Attendance tracking.
6. Click Save on the modal, then save the Calendar event.

Toggling Attendance Tracking During an Active Call

If you forgot to enable tracking in Google Calendar prior to starting, you can activate it live during the call:

1. Join your meeting on meet.google.com.
2. In the lower-right control toolbar, click the Host controls icon (represented by a blue padlock).
3. Scroll down through the Host controls panel to the Meeting activities section.
4. Toggle on the switch labelled Attendance tracking.
5. Google Meet will now log entry and exit events for all participants present from that point onward.

Receiving and Accessing Attendance Reports

Once the video conference concludes and all participants have disconnected:

1. Google Meet processes the session metadata and generates a structured Google Sheets spreadsheet.
2. The meeting organiser receives an automated email notification with the subject line "Attendance report for [Meeting Name] – [Date]".
3. The email contains a direct link to open the spreadsheet, which is also saved automatically in the organiser's Google Drive > Meet Recordings or root folder.
4. If co-hosts were designated and co-host management was active, co-hosts also receive access to the generated spreadsheet.

Interpreting Attendance Report Metrics

The generated attendance spreadsheet provides clean, tabular data formatted with the following columns:

• Name: The display name associated with the participant's Google Account or the guest name typed when entering the meeting lobby.
• Email: The authenticated email address of the attendee (blank if the user joined as an unauthenticated guest).
• Duration: The total cumulative time the attendee spent in the call (e.g., 52 mins 14 secs).
• Time Joined: The initial timestamp when the user first entered the meeting room.
• Time Exited: The timestamp when the user finally hung up or was removed.

If an attendee loses internet connection and reconnects three times during a webinar, Google Meet calculates their total aggregated duration automatically while recording individual session fragments on subordinate rows.

Troubleshooting Missing Attendance Reports

• Report not received: Verify the call had at least 5 attendees, or check your spam/junk folder for automated emails from [email protected].
• Setting missing in Host controls: Ensure your Workspace administrator has not disabled attendance tracking globally in the Google Admin Console > Apps > Google Workspace > Google Meet > Meet video settings.
• Premature report generation: If a host leaves the meeting while participants remain, the attendance sheet finalises only after the final remaining attendee leaves the virtual room.