It’s likely that at the start of 2020 a lot of people wouldn’t have known what Zoom did or was. Now you’ll hear, “let’s have a Zoom” thrown into conversations for both work and personal life – it’s been keeping many companies going during these challenging times and helping families stay connected.

By now you’ll likely have mastered the basics of Zoom, but whether you’re a Zoom pro or a beginner, there are several handy tips, and hacks you can use to enhance your video chatting experience and make your meetings as easy as possible.

Know your shortcuts

Although you’ll rarely be using your keyboard during a Zoom call, it might be worth learning a few of these handy shortcuts to make the software easier to use. Below are some of the ones we use the most, but Zoom have created a full list here.

• Alt+A mute/unmute audio
• Alt+V start/stop video
• Alt+S launch share screen or close screen share
• Alt+F1 switch to active speaker view in video meeting
• Alt+I open invite window
• F6 navigate through Zoom pop up windows

Breakout rooms

Breakout Rooms are a great feature that can be used even if participants don’t have a Zoom account or aren’t signed in. You can randomly or manually assign people to different ‘rooms’ if you’re holding a training or brainstorming session. This takes them out of the main zoom meeting until the host decides to bring them back in. You can even rename rooms so people can easily identify and move between them.

Use the sidechat

If you need to speak to one participant in the meeting but don’t want to interrupt the rest of the group, the best way to do this is to sidechat. By default, Zoom sets the chat’s messages to go to everyone, but if you open up Zoom’s text chat and click ‘everyone’, it will reveal a dropdown menu of individual users.

From there, just pick who you want to talk to and send them a message. Just be aware, however, that chat content is no longer accessible once the meeting is over – keep a note of anything important if you need to or ask the meeting host to save in-meeting chat.

Set up auto record

If your business is using a Pro account for Zoom, you can set it up to automatically record meetings that you host. You can record just the audio, or audio and video. At times when everyone isn’t always focused and paying close attention during remote meetings, this is a useful feature.

To do this you’ll need to go to Settings > Recording and click Automatic Recording to make sure it is enabled. If you don’t want to auto-record, you can use the Record icon on the bottom toolbar during a meeting to turn it on.

Mute and unmute

For times when you’re in a Zoom meeting with lots of people, you may want to leave yourself on mute until it’s your time to talk. But without having to remember to mute and unmute yourself, you can easily use the space bar. Whether you’re in a noisy area or just prefer to leave yourself on mute, unmute yourself by holding down the spacebar. Release the space bar, and go back to being muted.

Share and annotate

You might already be using screen sharing in your meetings, but did you know participants can draw and highlight on the screen? This can be helpful when discussing something visual like a website design or planning for a project. The annotating toolbar includes options to add text, to draw, add arrows, etc. The host can then use the toolbar’s save button to take a screenshot of the screen with the annotations.

For the meeting host, this function is on the web portal for Zoom, not the desktop app. It’s under Account Management > Account Settings > Meeting > Meeting (Basic).

If you’re a participant and want to join in by marking up an image that the host is sharing, you’ll need to see your toolbar. Go to View Option > Annotate.

Zoom scheduler

A handy tip for setting up Zoom meetings is using the Google Chrome, Zoom Scheduler. It enables you to create Zoom links from your Google calendar and send them directly to your meeting participants.

With the click of a button, you can start an instant meeting or schedule a future meeting. The meeting URL and information is sent via a Google Calendar invitation so the attendee can join with a single-click.

Start a zoom poll

A fun feature of zoom is adding in a poll to quickly collect responses from people about a topic. This is a good icebreaker, for large group meetings or something fun to do with your family and friends. You can ask general questions like “What TV series are you watching?” or get Yes or No answers from questions such as “Did you complete the online training?”.

Before you can make a poll, you need to enable the feature in Zoom from your web account (not desktop). Go to Account Management > Account Settings to find Polls.

Security

By now most of us will know how to take advantage of meeting room ID’s and passcodes, but you can use two-factor authentication to protect users and prevent against security breaches. This identifies online users by requiring them to present two or more pieces of evidence, or credentials, that authenticate their ownership of the account.

To set this up you need to go to Advanced > Security. Make sure the Sign in with Two-Factor Authentication option is enabled.

To learn more about Zoom and how to set it up securely for your business, contact us here.