29 Jan A guide to creating and hosting a Zoom meeting…

Zoom provides users with a platform for conducting meetings with video and audio. Participants can join a meeting via telephone or an internet abled device. You don’t need to have a Zoom account to participate in a meeting, but you do need an account to host a meeting.

KEY DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ZOOM ACCOUNT PLANS

• Free:
  • Host up to 100 participants
  • Group meetings for up to 40 minutes
  • Unlimited one on one meetings
• Pro:
  • Group meetings for up to 30 hours
  • Social Media Streaming
  • 1GB Cloud recording space
  • Webinars Option
• Business:
  • Host up to 300 participants
  • Company Branding
  • Managed Domains
  • Webinars Option

GETTING STARTED

Prior to setting up your first Zoom meeting, it’s advisable to familiarise yourself with the settings on your account and to set up your preferences. It’s also advisable to set up your profile with a profile picture and your preferred screen name.

Once you’ve familiarised yourself with the settings and set up your profile, you’re ready to create a meeting. On the home page when you first login to your account you’ll see the option to ‘schedule’ a meeting, click this option and enter the details accordingly.

For info: automatically generating your meeting ID, creates a one-time only meeting ID rather than using your personal meeting ID which stays the same.

Checking the require authentication to join box will limit your meeting to only participants who have set up a Zoom account.

We’ll explore the option of adding an additional host further in this article.

Once you’ve entered all of the details, at the bottom of the screen select the option to ‘save’, this will take you to an overview of the meeting details including the invite link. To attend a meeting, participants will need either the invite link or the unique meeting ID and passcode: on the meeting overview screen, beside the invite link there’s an option to ‘copy invitation’ this contains all of the details needed to access the meeting in every way possible including telephone.

HOSTING A MEETING

You’re ready to host your first Zoom meeting, it’s good practise to log in to the meeting a few minutes early and check everything is working ok, you can test most features of Zoom with just one person on the call so you may wish to test run anything you’re going to do in the meeting.

To start a meeting: when logged into your Zoom account, go to the ‘meetings’ page, a list of all your scheduled meetings will appear, hover over the meeting you want to start and select ‘start’. Once you’ve joined with your computer audio, your camera should now be showing your image on the screen.

At the top of the screen is a little green shield (  ) with a tick in the middle, clicking on this shows the details of the meeting including an option to copy the link so you can send it on without having to leave the meeting. There’s also access to some of your Zoom account and meeting settings by clicking on the little cog in the corner ().

Also at the top of the screen is a ‘view’ icon () the main view options are: speaker view where the person talking appears on a large screen and gallery view which brings in every participant on one screen through a grid. Note: when someone is screen sharing the number of participants you can view is limited and the ‘view’ icon changes to reflect this.

Along the bottom of the screen, you’ll find the main meeting control bar (some of the options available here will vary depending on your device and your settings):

HOSTING OPTIONS

The meeting host is the user that scheduled the meeting, they have full permissions to manage the meeting. There can only be one host of a meeting. For larger meetings, it’s advised that the host delivers the meeting content and that a co-host is assigned to manage the admin of the meeting, this will keep disruption to a minimum. There are two types of co-host:

Co-hosts: Shares most of the controls that hosts have, allowing the co-host to manage the administrative side of the meeting, such as managing attendees. A co-host can only be assigned during the meeting, they cannot be assigned ahead of time. Co-hosts cannot start a meeting. There is no limitation on the number of co-hosts you can have in a meeting. There are two ways to make a user a co-host:

• During a meeting: hover over a user’s video, click the “…” icon, click make co-host.
• Using the participant’s button in the toolbar: click on the button, hover over the name of the participant who is going to be a co-host, choose more and click make co-host.

Alternative hosts: Shares the same controls as co-hosts but can also start the meeting. Hosts can assign alternative hosts when they schedule a meeting.

ADDITIONAL SCREEN SHARE TIPS

When you first chose ‘share screen’ along the top there are two additional options:

Advanced: from here you can share slides as a virtual background, share a portion of the screen, share music or sound only, or content from a second, connected camera.

When you’re sharing your screen, the tool bar moves to the top of the screen, it disappears if you don’t use it for a few seconds, to get it back hover over the ‘you are screen sharing’ bar.

You can give other participants the option to share their screens and there’s also an option to view more than one screen at a time, during a meeting this can be done by clicking the little arrow next to the screen share icon or you can set it up prior to the meeting in your account settings.

Video sharing: when you first click on ‘screen share’ the ‘optimise’ option is especially useful when sharing YouTube and other online videos as it can prevent distortion, lagging, and buffering issues.

Sound sharing: the ‘share sound’ option shares the sound from your device directly with viewers rather than sharing it through your microphone

QUICK PARTICIPANT ACTIONS:

Hover over a participant and select the ‘…’ button to: rename / make co-host / mute / remove participants.

HOSTING A ZOOM WEBINAR

Webinars can be broadcast to up to 10,000 view-only attendees at a time. Screens, video, and audio can be shared; chat sessions between attendees and panellists can be hosted, and webinars can be run on either a pre-registration or open basis.

• The features in Webinar are tailored for managing large audiences with branding, registration, host controls, polls, question & answer, raise hand, chat, recording and reporting
• Webinars can be monetised with Paypal integration
• To get started with a webinar, go to your user management page found down the left-hand side of the main screen when you login

ADDITIONAL ADVANCED SETTINGS

In your main account settings select ‘in meeting advanced’ to find:

Remote support: allows a host to provide 1:1 support to a participant

Camera control: you can allow a participant to take remote control of your camera

Invitation languages: You can choose from a variety of languages for meeting invitations, including English, Spanish, French, and Russian.