Zoom is a great way to stay in touch with both coworkers and other people you care about in today’s socially distanced world. It’s easy to use, and only the person creating the meeting needs to download the software. There are several different ways for people to join the meeting.
But how does it work?
Creating a meeting
If you are planning on being the host of the Zoom call, you first need to download the software from Zoom’s website. After the software is downloaded, install it as you usually would.
1. When the Zoom dialog box appears, click “Sign in” to create your meeting.
2. To start a meeting immediately, click the “New meeting” icon.
3. To schedule a meeting, click the Schedule button.
4. On the screen that appears, fill in the information for the event and click schedule.
5. When you are ready to start your meeting, go to the top of the Zoom box and click on meetings.
6. Locate the meeting you are starting and click Start.
Invite
To invite people to your meeting, you can either send emails through the app or paste the link into another email or message.
Getting to a meeting
If someone has sent you an email invitation to a Zoom call, it offers you several different ways to enter the call.
The email will look something like this.
It is also possible that you could just receive a link.
Mobile App
Another way to get into Zoom Calls is to download the app on your smartphone.
1. Open the app and tap the blue “Join a Meeting” button.
2. On the next screen, type the meeting number and tap “Join Meeting.”
If all you received from the meeting coordinator is a link, the last nine digits of the address, after the forward slash, is the meeting number.
Website
You can also use your web browser to enter the call. Enter the meeting by copying and pasting the link listed under Join Zoom Meeting.
Call-in
If you want to call into the meeting and use audio only, choose a phone number from the list and dial.
You will be greeted and asked to enter your meeting ID number which appears in two different places in the email.
Zoom in the News
There has been a lot in the news lately concerning privacy and security with Zoom. Only one month ago, Zoom was serving a customer base of less than ten million daily users. Now they are serving over 200 million users each day, and this has created some new challenges for the company.
They are seeking to address these issues and have put a 90-day freeze on its feature updates and are focusing on security and privacy issues instead. If you’re not comfortable using Zoom now, you can check out these other options.
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