Zoom Tips – Part II

This week’s tip:  Zoom Tips – Part II

The great thing about Zoom is that they release new features all of the time, here are some new (and old) tips you may find helpful:

  • Background Noise Did you know you can use the Spacebar on your keyboard to temporarily unmute yourself?  This works well if you have a lot of background noise and just need to say something quick.  Hold the spacebar down for a moment to unmute, speak, and then release the spacebar to go back to mute.  Note:  For this to work Zoom has to be your active window, so if you’re tabbed out to your emails or another window then the spacebar will not unmute you in Zoom.
  • Personal Meeting Link You may be familiar with your PMI (Personal Meeting ID), which is a permanent personal Zoom meeting room that belongs to you and the Meeting ID never changes, but now you can customize it as a Personal Link.  Your Personal Link can be customized (5 – 40 characters) so that you can create an easy-to-read URL that directs the person to your PMI.  You can change this under Profile in your Zoom account settings.  Note:  Your PMI Link and your Personal Link both point to your Personal Meeting room, they are just diffferent ways to get there.

  •  Hide Non-Video Participants and Disable Chat:  These are a couple of options you can toggle on and off while you’re in a Live meeting.  Selecting “Hide Non-Video Participants” on your Options (three-dots) menu will remove any thumbnails from the screen of people who do not currently have their video showing.  This is a good trick if you have a busy meeting and want to see as many participants on one screen.  You can also disable chat, or change your chat settings, while in a live meeting.  Click on the Chat button to open the chat box, then select the Options (three-dots) menu and select who you want your participants to be able to chat with.

  • Scheduling Zoom Meetings On Behalf of Someone Else:  You can now give someone else permissions to create Zoom meetings on your behalf.  This is a great feature for anyone who regularly manages someone else’s calendar.    To set this up, the primary host needs to go into their Zoom settings (on the website), scroll down to Schedule Privilege (under Other), and click the + button next to Assign scheduling privilege to.  The other person will receive an email notification of the change and now just needs to select that person when scheduling a meeting for them.  Both users have to have Licensed accounts under our Pitzer account.  Both parties can remove this permission at any time by clicking the X button next their name in the settings.  Note:  Make sure you add the person using their Zoom email address, this is likely to be their [email protected].

  • Taking Attendance:  Under the Reports section of your Zoom web settings, you can view Usage reports of past meetingsThis can allow you to export statistics relating to that meeting, including who they are and how long they attended.  This works whether you record your session or not.