Essential Features Guide

Zoom is a cloud-based HD video conferencing platform. This helpful guide is a concise resource you can use while hosting a Zoom meeting. There are three roles in Zoom: Host, Co-Host, and Participant. This guide will cover meeting controls, managing participants, sharing content, managing chat, and using advanced interactive features.

Getting Started in a Zoom Meeting

The host meeting controls will appear at the bottom of your screen. Meeting participants will have some of the same controls, however the host has the most control and ability to turn settings on and off for participants during the meeting. We will start with the main host controls from left to right below.

Host Meeting Controls

Mute/Unmute: This allows you to mute or unmute your microphone.
Start/Stop Video: This allows you to start or stop your own video.
Invite: Invite others to join your meeting.
Manage Participants: Opens the Participants window.
Polls: Allows you to create, edit, and launch your polls.
Share Screen: Start sharing your screen. You will be able to select the desktop or application you want to share.
Chat: Access the chat window to chat with the participants.
Record: Start or stop a cloud or local recording.
Breakout Rooms: Start breakout rooms.
Reactions: Allows participants to send a thumbs up or clap to communicate without interrupting the meeting.
End Meeting: This will end the meeting for all participants. If you want to have the meeting continue, you should give another participant host control before leaving the meeting.

Managing Participants in Your Meeting

Manage Participants is the panel where you can see everyone logged in to your meeting in a convenient participant list. This panel also has features at the bottom which give hosts the ability to “Mute All”, “Unmute All”, and other important meeting settings under the drop-down for “More”.

To manage an individual participant in a meeting, hover over their name in the participant list and click “More >”. You will see options to mute/unmute audio, ask to start video, make host/co-host, and more. You can even choose to remove a user from the meeting if they are being disruptive.

NOTE: Promoting a capable participant to Co-Host can help you facilitate your Zoom meetings. If you are leading the meeting you can put your Co-Host in charge of moderating the chat, muting disruptive participants, or leading discussion.

Sharing Content in Your Meeting

The main way to share content in Zoom is via the Share Screen feature. Zoom allows for screen sharing on desktop, tablet and mobile devices running Zoom. This feature is available to both hosts and participants, but can be turned off for participants if the host chooses to do so.

Click the Share Screen button located in your meeting controls. Select the screen you want to share. You can also choose an individual application that is already open on your computer, the desktop, a whiteboard, or an iPhone/iPad.

Finally, you can enable certain check-box features (along the bottom) before screen sharing:

Check Share Computer Sound: If you check this option, any sound played by your computer will be shared in the meeting. This is helpful if you want to screen share video clips with an audio component.
Check Optimize for full screen video clip: Check this if you will be sharing a video clip in full screen mode.

NOTE: When you start sharing your screen, the meeting controls will move to the top into a menu that you can drag around your screen. You can click “More” to access hidden items like Chat and Breakout Rooms.

Managing In-Meeting Chat

The in-meeting chat allows you to send chat messages to other users within a meeting. You can send a private message to an individual user or you can send a message to an entire group. As the host, you can choose who the participants can chat with or to disable chat entirely.

In-meeting chat can be saved manually or automatically. Auto-save chat will automatically save your in-meeting chat locally on your computer. You can also manually save your chat when you start local or cloud recording.

Managing Chat

While in a meeting, click Chat in the meeting controls. This will open the chat on the right. You can type a message into the chat box or click on the drop down next to To: if you want to send a message to a specific person.

If you are sending to a specific person, double-check that you have the correct recipient in the To: drop-down and that the text reads (Private).

When new chat messages are sent to you or everyone, a preview of the message will appear as a notification and Chat will flash orange in your host controls.

Accessing Chat While Sharing Your Screen

While in share screen mode, you may have difficulty finding the Chat. All you need to do is click on the “More” drop down on the right of the floating meeting controls and you can open Chat. You may want to open the Chat in a pop-out window as soon as you begin screen share in order to prevent any future disruptions. Once the Chat is open you will be able to move it anywhere on your screen.

Managing Polls and Breakout Rooms

The two most commonly used advanced features in Zoom are Polls and Breakout Rooms. These features are a great way to increase interaction and engagement during a meeting. However they may seem complicated to a first time user. We highly recommend testing out these features in a practice session with one or two attendees before using them in a live meeting.

Polls
The polling feature for meetings allows you to create single choice or multiple choice polling questions for your meetings. You will be able to launch the poll during your meeting and gather the responses from your attendees. You also have the ability to download a report of polling after the meeting. Polls can also be conducted anonymously, if you do not wish to collect participant information with the poll results.

Step-by-step instructions: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/213756303-Polling-for-Meetings

Breakout Rooms
Breakout rooms allow you to split your Zoom meeting in up to 50 separate sessions. The meeting host can choose to split the participants of the meeting into these separate sessions automatically or manually, and can switch between sessions at any time. Cloud recording during a Breakout will only record what happens in the main meeting room.

Up to 50 breakout rooms can be created
Max 200 participants in a breakout room (requires Large Meeting 200 add-on)
Breakout room participants have full audio, video and screen share capabilities

Step-by-step instructions: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/206476313-Managing-Video-Breakout-Rooms

NOTE: If either of these features is NOT showing up on your Zoom account then you may need to enable them from your settings. To do so, sign in to the Zoom web portal. Click Account Management > Account Settings (if you are an account administrator) or Settings (if you are an account member).

If you are not seeing other host meeting controls then you should also confirm that you are signed in as host under the participant list.

For more resources please visit: http://cusps.zendesk.com