Zoom makes running a meeting easy to do. You have everything that you need in order to do so in your account features. However, keep in mind that if you want to run a meeting that’s longer than 40 minutes or has a large number of attendees, you’ll need one of their paid accounts.
Smaller Zoom meetings (with less than 100 participants) with limited account features, can be run under a free account. However, your functionality is very limited.
Setting Up a Meeting
To set up a meeting, you’ll need to have a Zoom account, whether free or paid. It’s as easy as:
Step 1: Log into Zoom
Step: Click on “New Meeting”
Your instant meeting will be in progress, and you can add people to it from there.
Scheduling and Invitations
However, if you want to hold a more formal, scheduled meeting, you’ll need to follow the prompts on the main account screen to not only schedule it but also invite participants.
Step 1: Log into Zoom
Step 2: Click on the Schedule icon
Step 3: Enter your information, including your topic, chosen date and time, and your time zone.
Step 4: Set up all of the additional features, including whether or not it will be a video meeting or just an audio one, and whether or not you want the participant’s video to be on or off when they join the meeting.
Step 5: Choose your audio options (audio, visual, or both)
Step 6: Click on “Schedule”
Next, you need to invite some participants to your meeting.
Step 1: Log into Zoom or go back your main account screen
Step 2: Click on Meetings
Step 3: Choose your meeting and click on the main topic
Step 4: Copy and paste the meeting invitation
Step 5: Send out the invitation via email to your desired participants
Running Zoom Meetings
On the day of your meeting, spend some time preparing for it. Start by ensuring that you have all the proper settings in place, including your background, branding, and whether or not you want the attendees to pop up on video the minute that they join the meeting.
Also, take the time to test your computer’s audio and video functionality so that you don’t have to adjust any setting as the meeting begins. This way, you can jump right into it, ready to do.
Finally, be prepared. Your audience doesn’t want to see you fumble for things to say. Have a set agenda, some PowerPoint slides, and a general of what you’d like to say to your participants.
Host Controls
There are a number of host controls within a Zoom meeting. Some of them are very similar to the ones used by participants, including the audio and video controls.
Audio Controls
The “mute” and “unmute” button allows you to control whether or not the other people on the call can hear you.
Clicking on the up arrow or caret ^ next to the mute/unmute button gives you control over the speaker and microphone. With it, you can change the audio settings, switch from the built-in speaker to a plug-in one, or turn off the computer audio altogether.
Shortcuts: Instead of clicking the buttons on the screen, you can use the following keyboard shortcuts to mute the audio on your end, leaving the other attendees unable to hear you.
Windows: Alt + A
Mac: Shift + Command + A
If you want to speak, but have the microphone muted, you can press the spacebar key on either type of computer. This will “unmute” your microphone as long as the key is held down. Once you release it, your microphone will be muted again.
Video Controls
Using the video controls, you can control the camera on your computer, preventing other attendees from seeing you. Note that this doesn’t affect the audio, so you’ll still be able to hear the host and other attendees.
Clicking the “start video” and “stop video” button turns your computer’s camera either on or off.
Clicking on the up arrow or caret ^ next to the start/stop video button gives you control over the camera that Zoom has access to. With it, you can change the background to a virtual one included by the program (if the host allows you to do so), switch from one camera to another that’s also attached to your computer or device, or turn off the video altogether.
Manage Participants
With this option, you can control who is in attendance at the meeting, removing any people who seem to cause problems or shouldn’t be present. You also have the ability to invite people to join your meeting or to allow your participants to do the same.
Polling
Hosts have the ability to create polls during a meeting. You can edit and launch the poll as well. This is a good way to see what your audience thinks about a specific topic.
Share Screen
Like the attendees, you can share your screen with everyone watching in order to make a specific point or even have them follow along with an accompanying PowerPoint presentation.
You can share your screen with your attendees in the middle of a meeting by following these steps:
Make sure that you’re using either the web browser extension or a mobile device app.
Step 1: Click on the meeting control button labeled “Share Screen”
Step 2: Choose which screen that you wish to share. Zoom will give you several different options. Simply click on the one that you want everyone else in the meeting to see. Additional options include showing other apps that you have open on either your phone, computer, or another device that is being used to view the meeting.
Chat
Hosts have the ability to text chat with the attendees or turn off the option so that the chat room won’t open.
Record
This option allows you to control the cloud or local recording of your meeting. You can begin recording, stop the recording, or even pause it midway through.
Closed Captioning
Hosts can allow Zoom to provide closed captioning to attendees for those who may be unable to listen to the meeting.
Breakout Rooms
Hosts can open up breakout rooms during the meeting. We’ll go into those in more depth in the next section.
Live
You have two choices to go “live” with your meeting. You can choose to do so on Workplace by Facebook or via a custom streaming service, like YouTube.
End Meeting
Only hosts have the power to end a meeting. Attendees can always leave a meeting at any time.
Break Out Rooms
Break out rooms are used to break the meeting up into smaller groups. To do this, the option first needs to be enabled in your account settings.
Step 1: Log into Zoom as an administrator
Step 2: Go to Account Management and then to Account Settings
Step 3: Click on the Meeting tab and then go to Breakout Room
Step 4: Toggle the setting to on
From that page, you can adjust the breakout room settings to:
• Automatically break the group up evenly and assign them to rooms
• Close the rooms after a certain period of time
• Put the members of a designated group into a room
• Assign registered participants to certain breakout rooms
Messaging
Hosts have the ability to let their participants chat amongst themselves and send private messages. If the messaging option is enabled, you can access it in the following way:
Step 1: Click the “participants” button and then the “chat” button at the bottom of the screen.
Step 2: If you’re not in full-screen mode, the chat window will pop up on the right-hand side of the screen. Otherwise, in full-screen mode, the chat window can be moved around on your screen, allowing you to place it where you’d like.
In order to send a message through chat, just type it into the open chat window and press the “enter” key. This sends the message.
If you want to send a private message, click the menu option next to the “To” in the chat window and select the person that the message is intended for. If you don’t do this, your message will be seen by everyone in the meeting who has the chat window open.
Recipients of chat messages will see a small notification near the bottoms of their screen. However, if that person has the chat window open, it will appear there, instead of as a notification.
