COVID-19 has led individuals and businesses to look for viable ways to communicate and collaborate while social distancing or remaining at home. This need has been largely met by the video conferencing platform Zoom. Zoom has quickly become the leading platform for online video conferencing. Zoom is so popular due to its abundance of useful features and its easy to use software. Despite its thoughtful and intuitive design, there is a learning curve with Zoom and in this post, we’ll be going over some of Zoom’s basic features. 

Joining Meetings

There are two ways to join a meeting

  1. A Zoom meeting link. If sent a Zoom meeting link, simply click on the link someone has sent you 
  2. A Zoom meeting’s Meeting ID. Go to Zoom.com and click “Join a Meeting” in the upper right corner of the screen, a box will then appear where you can input the 11 digit Meeting ID.

Hosting a Meeting 

There are two main ways to host a meeting and invite others to your meeting. 

  1. You can log in and press “Host A Meeting” in the top right portion of the screen. This will immediately start a meeting. Once in the meeting, if you click the small square in the top left containing an “i” you will be able to see the meeting’s URL and meeting ID. You can invite others to join the meeting by sending them the meeting’s URL or meeting ID

 

2. You can click on “My account” in the top right corner of the screen after logging into Zoom. After selecting “My account”, click “Schedule a Meeting” to set up a meeting for a predetermined time. Once you have scheduled the meeting you can invite others to the meeting by sending them the meeting URL or meeting ID

These are just the most basic Zoom features (joining and hosting meetings). There are plenty of tutorials and guides for Zoom’s more advanced features.  

Now that we’ve gone over the basics of using Zoom, you’re probably wondering, is Zoom free? Zoom has a wide variety of plans, but it’s possible that its most basic, free plan will meet your needs. The most basic plan includes an unlimited number of 1 on 1 meetings and allows you to meet with groups of up to 100 for 40 minutes at a time. 

Zoom’s Pro plan costs $14.99 a month per host and enables you to hold group meetings of up to to 100 participants for 24 hours. It also comes with advanced features that allow you to record Zoom Meetings, enable/disable private messages, and more. 

All in all, Zoom is a great platform that makes social distancing and telecommuting much easier. If you are spending a lot of time at home, or are telecommuting, be sure to read about a few simple ways to improve your home wifi.