Will anyone watch it? How to make sure your team watches async updates
Steffen Rosenögger, Founder of CapmePublished October 12, 2026
How to make sure your team watches async video updates: the 75 % rule, who sees what, how Loom and Microsoft 365 count views, and a reminder to copy.
In short
- Track the whole meeting: per person, how many topics they finished, or whether they only opened it.
- Loom counts a view after five seconds and Microsoft 365 after any playback. Capme counts a topic only at 75%, and a view is not a finished update.
- In Germany, agree with the works council before anyone sees names next to progress. Totals only is the fallback.
Will anyone watch an async update? A recorded meeting can tell its organiser how many of its topics each person has watched, and in Capme a topic counts as watched once a viewer has played 75% of it. The number to track is the share of people on the audience list who finished every topic. It goes up when each topic is short and when skipping the update costs the viewer something. Capme's Overview shows a different figure, Watch-through: the share of all topic videos watched.
The objection usually comes from a manager whose chat link got no reaction. A chat link says nothing about who was meant to see it, so nobody can check who is missing. A recorded meeting has that list, and the organiser reads it on Friday morning.
How does Capme show who watched an async update?
Capme, a meeting platform for async meetings, records how far each person on the audience list got in each topic and shows it on the meeting's own page. A fictional example: a team lead runs the weekly update in Capme Meetings with three topics and twelve people on the audience list. On Friday her page shows:
- Eight people marked "watched": they reached the mark in all three topics.
- Two marked "1/3 watched": each finished one of the three topics.
- One marked "opened": the page was loaded, but no topic reached the mark.
- One marked "not opened".
She had switched on "Remind people who have not watched" when she published, with the preset "After 3 days" (the others are a week and two weeks). The four who had not finished got one email titled "You haven't finished" plus the meeting's name, which takes them back to where they stopped. The page does not say which topic the two finished, so she checks topic lengths before she asks them. A topic that ran eleven minutes is the likelier problem.
As checked in Capme's code in October 2026, the limits are these. "Watched" means the video played past 75% or to its end, so a viewer who drags the slider forward also counts. The deadline on a meeting is the recording deadline for speakers, so a watch-by date goes in the description or your team channel. Meetings start at Team, where viewers are free and speakers pay. Organising a meeting also takes a speaker seat.
Who can see who watched: organiser, admin, speaker or viewer?
In Capme only the organiser and admins see other people's watch progress, and an admin decides whether they see it per person or as totals. The rule is applied on the server before the page reaches the browser, so a speaker's browser never receives colleagues' progress:
| Role | "Per person" (default) | "Totals only" |
|---|---|---|
| Organiser | Each name with watched, partly (2/3), opened or not opened | Names without progress, plus one line: "8 of 12 have watched everything, 3 have started" |
| Admin | The same as the organiser, on every meeting; the Overview's Watch-through, never by person | Totals on every meeting; the same Watch-through |
| Speaker | Own progress; who applauded their topic, by name | The same |
| Viewer | Own progress; chapters already watched are marked; picks up where they stopped | The same |
In Germany, per-person progress makes the tool a matter for the works council, and introducing a video tool with the works council covers what to agree. Our view: per person helps in a team of up to about ten, where the organiser follows up as a colleague. In a department of 60, the totals tell you whether the format works, and the names mostly invite misuse. The admin switch and its wording are in the help article what admins can see.
A line you can send to the works council or your admin before the trial: "We'll run the pilot with watch progress set to totals only. Organisers see how many finished, not who. Only applause carries a name, to the speaker who received it. We won't use the numbers to assess anyone."
Which tools tell you who watched an async update?
Loom, Microsoft 365 and Capme each count watching differently. The table draws on each vendor's help pages, checked in October 2026, and on Capme's code:
| Tool | What counts | Who is named | Where it falls short for a status round |
|---|---|---|---|
| Loom | A view after five seconds; completion rates on Business, Business+ AI and Enterprise | Viewers signed in to Loom; others show as Anonymous unless a business plan asks for an email | One viewer list per video, so five speakers mean five lists |
| Microsoft 365 (Clipchamp, Teams recordings) | Any playback over zero seconds; views, viewers and a retention curve per video | Counts; names on the file card if a site owner switches that on | Reminders by hand or a Power Automate flow you build; meeting recordings expire after 120 days by default |
| Capme | A topic at 75% played or at its end; skipping ahead counts | Each person on the audience list, or totals only | Counts topics per person, never which topic; one automatic reminder; no captions, transcripts or comments |
For one clip to two colleagues, Loom's viewer list is enough, and a Capme seat buys you nothing. The difference shows when five speakers report to a list of 20 and one page has to say who is missing. Which tool suits a status update overall is in async video update tools compared; the Microsoft side is in Microsoft Teams for status updates.
How long can an async update be before people stop watching?
An async update is likelier to hold its viewers when each topic stays under about six minutes. In 6.9 million viewing sessions across four edX courses, median watching time was at most six minutes however long the video was, and Philip Guo, Juho Kim and Rob Rubin concluded in their 2014 paper at ACM Learning at Scale: "Instructors should segment videos into short chunks, ideally less than 6 minutes." The viewers were students in online courses, not colleagues, so treat six minutes as a direction. Four topics of four minutes make a 16-minute meeting that people finish; one speaker with a 16-minute monologue is the video they abandon. How long a single video message should be is covered in quick video messages for remote teams.
What makes a team actually watch async updates?
A team watches async updates when skipping them has a cost it can feel. These are the rules we would set in week one:
- Put a watch-by date and time in the meeting description, such as Thursday 12:00, and keep it the same every week.
- Give every topic a title that names what the viewer must know or decide, such as "Release moves to 14 November: who is affected", not "Engineering".
- Do not retell the video in the next live meeting. Start the call from the open questions instead.
- Turn the reminder on and leave it at three days. A reminder after two weeks arrives when the update is out of date.
- Watch the totals across four rounds before you change anything. A single weak week can simply be a holiday week.
What if the team still doesn't watch?
If the team still doesn't watch after four rounds, the progress page shows where it breaks, and each pattern has its own fix. Read the table as our rule of thumb; it comes from no study:
| The page shows | Likely cause | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Two thirds of the list or more watched everything | The format works | Keep it, and stop reading names every week |
| Many "not opened" | People don't know the email is the meeting | The team lead says so once in the channel |
| Many partly watched | One topic loses them | Shorten the longest topic or move it to the end |
| Many "opened", no topic finished | People looked in and left | Ask two of them why |
| Under half watched everything, reminder on | The content does not need video | Switch that meeting to a written update |
We set the bar at two thirds because below it the organiser ends up retelling the update to a third of the team, and that habit teaches everyone that watching is optional. The team in the example above, at 8 of 12, sits exactly on it. Per meeting, that is at least two thirds of topic views, near the 70 % Watch-through the 14-day pilot sets as its go threshold. If a topic needs agreement rather than information, it was never a good candidate; the hub on which meetings can go async sorts that out.
What should a reminder to watch say?
A reminder to watch should name the one thing in the update that affects the reader and the time it takes. For the team channel, a day before the watch-by date, copy this and fill in the brackets:
See who watched your next update
One agenda, a speaker per topic, the team on the audience list. The trial runs 14 days.
Frequently asked questions
- Can the organiser see which topic lost people?
- No. The organiser's list counts finished topics per person, and the Overview's Watch-through is one share for the whole workspace. Neither breaks watching down by topic. Check topic lengths first; the longest is the likeliest cause.
- Do viewers outside the workspace need to be paid for to be counted?
- No. An audience list takes up to 200 addresses, colleagues or outsiders, and viewers are free on Team and above. Their progress counts the same way. They sign in with their email address; prices are on the pricing page.
- Can I send a second reminder in Capme?
- Not to viewers: the automatic reminder goes once per meeting, so post a second nudge in your team channel with the template above.
- Can watch progress be used in performance reviews?
- We advise against it. It shows how far a video played and says nothing about understanding. In Germany any such use needs the works council. Set the workspace to totals only if the data should not be about individuals.