Zoom Meeting Best Practices and Tips

April 3, 2020

During the transition to remote and online learning, web conferencing systems such as Zoom are being widely utilized for classes, office-hours, meetings, and even coffee breaks and drop-ins! 

In order to keep you and your students safe, please review this Zoom Best Practices Guide (https://bit.ly/346Viaj). In addition, here are some recommendations and tips for setting up and using Zoom. 

When setting up a meeting:

• Set “Video” to “Off” for “Participants” – With this setting, participants will enter the meeting with cameras off then will have to turn their cameras on to show their video.
• Turn on “Require meeting password.” (Less important for meetings scheduled in Canvas)
• Leave “Mute participants upon entry” turned on. – With this setting, participants will enter the meeting muted then will have to unmute themselves to share audio.
• Leave “Enable join before host” turned off.
• Set “Meeting ID” to “Generate Automatically” or turn off “Use Personal Meeting ID.”
• Consider turning on “Enable Waiting Room.” (More about Waiting Rooms)

Be prepared to use the following in-meeting tools and settings: 

• Mute all participants: Open “Manage Participants” then click “Mute All.”
• Lock the meeting after participants have arrived: Open “Manage Participants,” click “More,” then select “Lock meeting.”
• Remove uninvited and unruly participants: Open “Manage Participants,” hover on the person you want to remove, click “More,” then select “Remove.” 
• Stop Participants from sharing their screen: Click the arrow next to the “Share Screen” button, select “Advanced sharing options,” set “Who can share?” to “Only Host.”
  • Elevating a Participant to Co-host should allow that person to share their screen.
• Stop Participants from using the Annotation tool: Click “Share Screen,” choose something to share, open the “More” menu, select “Disable participants annotation.”

For tips on using Zoom to host public events, please visit this Zoom’s “How to Keep the Crashers Out of Your Zoom Event” blog post (https://bit.ly/39yL8k1). Please keep in mind that when you share your meeting link on a public forum such as social media or a public website, that makes your meeting extremely public. Anyone with the link can join your meeting.

For Webex best practices, please visit this Cisco Webex Best Practices for Secure Meetings support guide (https://bit.ly/3dKTacT). 

If you have questions or concerns about Zoom or Webex, please email ITHELP@clemson.edu.