Pre-dispatch window (meetings)
The pre-dispatch window is the lead time the meeting bot uses to spin up before a scheduled meeting. Typical pre-dispatch is 2-3 minutes; the bot is fully ready to join before the scheduled start time.
Why it matters
Meeting bots that join late are nearly useless. If the bot joins 45 seconds into a 30-minute meeting, the recap is missing context. If the bot fails to join at all, the user assumes the recap will exist and only discovers the gap when they look for it later.
The pre-dispatch window is the engineering response: the bot starts spinning up 2-3 minutes before the scheduled meeting time. It establishes its connection, reaches the waiting room (if any), and is fully ready to enter when the meeting starts. By the time the human host clicks "start meeting," the bot is queued and ready.
The window has a few moving parts:
- Cold-start latency. The bot's container needs ~30-60 seconds to come up. Pre-dispatch covers this.
- Authentication time. Some meeting platforms require the bot to log in before joining. This takes seconds.
- Network setup. Audio/video pipelines need to handshake.
The honest trade-off: pre-dispatching too early wastes compute (the bot is sitting idle). Pre-dispatching too late risks a missed start. Most production systems land on 2-3 minutes for a balance. Meetings less than 10 minutes from now might pre-dispatch immediately rather than wait.
How Ajeris handles this
Ajeris's meeting bot pre-dispatches 2 minutes before the scheduled start time for meetings ≥10 minutes out. For ad-hoc invites less than 10 minutes from now, the bot dispatches immediately. The bot waits in the meeting platform's lobby (or equivalent) until the meeting actually starts, then enters and begins recording.
The user sees a "heads-up" SMS shortly before each meeting confirming the bot is dispatched, with options to switch to invisible mode (in-browser recording) or skip recording entirely.
