Zoom Made Easy: Establishing Lasting Connections

181 Pages·2020·30.21 MB·english

by  James Bernstein

By James Bernstein
Copyright © 2020 by James Bernstein. All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Printed in the United States of America
Bernstein, James
Zoom Made Easy
Book 17 in the Computers Made Easy series
For more information on reproducing sections of this book or sales of this
book, go to www.onlinecomputertips.com
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 – What is Zoom?
Zoom Features
Zoom Plans
Chapter 2 - Signing up for Zoom
Creating an Account
Signing Into Zoom
Downloading the Zoom Client
Chapter 3 - The Zoom Interface
Zoom Client Software Interface
Zoom Website Interface
Profile Settings
Calendar and Contact Integration
Contacts
Google Chrome Extension
Checking Your Microphone and Webcam Setup
Chapter 4 - Zoom Meetings
Creating and Scheduling a Meeting
Starting a Meeting
Joining a Meeting
Making Calls via Zoom Numbers vs. Using Computer Audio
Screen Sharing
Whiteboard Feature
Making Annotations
Chatting
Background Effects
Zoom Outlook Plugin
Changing Video Views
Muting and Spotlighting a Participant
Recording Your Meetings
Meeting IDs
Chapter 5 - Zoom Webinars
Scheduling a Webinar
Templates
Branding
Configuring Polls
Configuring Q&A (Question & Answer)
Practice Mode
User Registration
Make an Attendee a Participant
Chat
Launching a Poll
Live Streaming
Chapter 6 – Settings
General
Video
Audio
Share Screen
Chat
Virtual Background
Recording
Profile
Statistics
Keyboard Shortcuts
Accessibility
Chapter 7– Using Zoom on Your Mobile Device
Downloading and Installing Zoom on Your Mobile Device
Using Your Zoom App For Meetings
Sharing Your Mobile Device From Your Computer
Chapter 8 – Additional\Advanced Zoom Features
Breakout Rooms
Nonverbal Feedback
Remote Support and Control
Changing Your Profile Picture
What’s Next?
About the Author
Introduction
Thanks to modern technology and the fact that all of our devices are Internet
enabled means that keeping connected with friends, family and coworkers is
even easier than ever. We can use our computers, tablets and smartphones to
do things such as make video calls, hold meetings and have presentations in
addition to sending emails and text messages.
Fortunately, there are many ways to go about performing these tasks yet
unfortunately you will need to choose the platform you are going to use to do
this because you will need to decide on which method (or software) you will
be using. It’s important to choose a platform that is easy to use and also
something the people you will be communicating with can also use without
having too much of a learning curve in case they are not too tech savvy.
Just like with most software, there are a few vendors who dominate the
market for their respective types of applications such as Microsoft does for
operating systems (Windows) and word processors (Microsoft Word). You
have most likely heard of other software such as Skype that allows video
calls and GoToMeeting which is commonly used in the business sector for
hosting online meetings that can be accessed from anywhere you have an
Internet connection.
Recently, Zoom Video Communications has been gaining ground with their
Zoom online meeting and webinar software as one of the most commonly
used online tools being used today. The Zoom software is fairly easy to use
and can be configured to suit just about anyone’s needs. It’s easy enough for
the typical home user to use to host video calls with friends and family
members and also robust enough for the business user who needs to hold
meetings and host webinars for their clients.
For those of us who like things that are free, Zoom has a free version that has
a lot of features included as well as other pay for versions with more
advanced features. This way you can try it out and see if it does the job for
you and if you later decide you would like to take advantage of more of the
advanced features then you can get yourself a subscription to enable these
features.
Regardless of what version you use, you should be able to get the hang of
how Zoom works fairly quickly and be able to start hosting meetings and
webinars in no time.
The goal of this book is to get you up and running with Zoom and show you
how to host meetings and webinars as well as go over all of the basic features
of Zoom and also some of the more advanced options. I will also go over the
configuration settings so you will know how to customize Zoom to make it
work just the way you want it to work. So on that note, let’s get the
communication channels open!
Chapter 1 – What is Zoom?
Like I mentioned in the introduction, Zoom is an online collaboration
software platform that allows you to host meetings and webinars with other
people. You can do things such as make video calls where you can see the
other people you are talking to and share your screen so others can see what
you are working on. A meeting can be between you and one other person or
you can have hundreds of people on at one time. As you can see in figure 1.1
you can have many people in a single Zoom meeting and be able to interact
and see them all at the same time.
Figure 1.1
If you don’t want anyone participating in your meeting and would rather just
have them watch your presentation then you can host a webinar instead of a
meeting. This way you can have everyone attending focusing on you and
what you are discussing (or selling). I will be discussing both meetings and
webinars later in the book.
Many people use Zoom as a way to talk to family members in other parts of
the country or even other countries since it’s an easy to use way to make
video calls over the Internet. This way you can have the entire family on one
call and be able to see everyone on your screen as they are talking assuming
they have some type of camera connected to their computer or are using their
tablet or smartphone with its built in camera.
Before I get into the details of how to use Zoom I thought it would be best to
give you a better idea of what you can do with Zoom.
Zoom Features
In order to decide whether or not Zoom will work for you, it’s important to
know what Zoom can and can’t do. In this section, I will be going over the
key features of the software so you will have a better understanding of what
you can do with it.
The features that you will be able to use will vary on whether you are using
the free version of Zoom or if you are using one of the subscription based
services. As of this writing there is the free version and three subscription
(paid) versions that you can use, each with their own set of features. I will be
going over these different versions later in this chapter. I will also be going
into more details on many of these features in later chapters as well.
As you might have figured out by now, you can use Zoom to host meetings
and webinars which is a fancy word for a web seminar. While you are
running a meeting or webinar you will be able to use some or all of these
features to enhance their functionality. Here is a listing of some of the more
commonly used features.
Individual and group chat messages – This allows you to send
messages to other users participating in your meeting or webinar.
Screen sharing – Allows you so share all of your screen or just a
certain program with other participants so they can see what you
are working on.
Screen annotation – Lets you mark up your screen to make notes
or highlight certain aspects of your presentation.
Whiteboard – This can be used just like a whiteboard you would
have on the wall in a conference room where you can draw