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‘Zoom Like a Zoomie’: 10 Tips & Tricks to Use Zoom Like a Pro

Here are 10 tips & tricks Zoom users can start employing now to get the most of the Zoom platform and expand their capabilities!

6 min read

Updated on September 01, 2022

Published on October 31, 2019

In this blog

01 Zoom Meetings - Jumplink to Zoom Meetings
02 Zoom Webinars - Jumplink to Zoom Webinars
03 Updates to the Desktop Client - Jumplink to Updates to the Desktop Client
04 Zoomtopia 2019 recordings are live! - Jumplink to Zoomtopia 2019 recordings are live!

John Montgomery

Marketing Content Writer

Zoom provides users with a top-tier communications experience through industry-leading meeting, phone, chat, and webinar solutions. And while reliability and consistency are core to those experiences, our users love how Zoom’s innovative features give them added functionality to further drive business success. Zoom is a vast platform that’s always expanding, and staying up to date on all these valuable features is key to leveraging the technology's potential. So, Zoom customer success manager Emily Nguyen and sales engineer Kevin Nguyen presented some of the most useful tips and tricks at Zoomtopia 2019 to help you get the most out of your Zoom product. Here are 10 of them, many of them coming soon!

The In Meeting controls in the Zoom Meetings platform allows users to create and control a meeting space for all their security, accessibility, and organizational needs. Here are some In Meeting controls users will be able to leverage soon to improve their meeting experiences:

Test your microphone and speakers: Don’t get caught on mute! Users can test their microphone and speakers in the meeting platform to ensure they can hear and be heard clearly. This helps users detect and fix any hardware-related audio issues from the very start of the meeting.
Hide non-video participants: There are three video layouts when attendees are not using screen share: active speaker, gallery, and mini. If you are using the gallery layout with a larger number of attendees, non-video participants can take up the available space on the screen. By hiding non-video participants, users can clean up their gallery view and only see attendees who have their cameras on.

Pre-assign breakout rooms: To save time and prevent logistics issues, users can pre-assign attendees to breakout rooms before the meeting begins. You can even pre-assign attendees that are from the same organization into the same group. Just remember, if registration is enabled and an external participant registers for the meeting, users will need to assign them to a breakout room DURING the meeting.

Virtual backgrounds: Hide your office clutter or add some corporate branding with a virtual background during a Zoom Meeting. Users can upload their own images (Zoom recommends that these images have an aspect ratio of 16:9 and a resolution of 1920 x 1080 px) and preview the virtual background to detect any issues before joining the meeting. And soon, Zoom will support Microsoft PowerPoint files as a custom background and the use of a video virtual background, a non-static background for added fun.
Audio transcription: Finally, you don’t have to retype all your meeting notes! With audio transcription available for meetings recorded in the cloud, users can create easy access to meeting information. This transcript is also searchable, so you can more easily locate the information you need. Be sure to enable audio transcription for your recorded sessions to get access to the transcripts.

With the ability to effectively and efficiently broadcast to up to 10,000 attendees, Zoom Webinars is perfect for company all-hands meetings, lectures, and other situations where hosts need to communicate with a large group of people without audience interruption. A few helpful webinar tips:

Webinar chat: Although webinars allow hosts to speak without interruption from the audience, sometimes speakers need to discreetly contact members of the audience. With Zoom’s webinar chat function, hosts can chat directly with individual members of the audience without broadcasting the conversation to the rest of the audience.
Unmuting call-in attendees: Registrants for Zoom webinars can call into the webinar and listen in using their mobile devices. Zoom recently released a feature that allows the host of the webinar to unmute call-in attendees, which makes it easier to have guest speakers call in to the webinar to speak.

Zoom’s desktop client is the gateway to Zoom’s unified communications platform, allowing users full access to Zoom’s meetings, phone, chat, and webinar products in one interface. Zoom has recently released a number of updates to the desktop client, giving users greater access to information and the capabilities they need to work more efficiently.

Notify me when available: Instead of searching around the office for a coworker, now the Zoom client can send users a notification when the person they are trying to contact is available. Users can search the person they are trying to contact in the Team Chat platform and choose, “Notify me when available” from the dropdown menu to use this feature.

Note taker area: Taking notes during a call can be difficult, as it often means users have to switch between applications and windows to take notes. Zoom users will soon be able to take notes directly within the client, making the note-taking process more convenient.
Elevate calls to a meeting: Zoom users calling other users via Zoom Phone can now elevate those calls to a meeting. This is done without ending the phone call or navigating to a different application or window. Users simply access the Zoom client while on the call and choose to elevate it to a Zoom Meeting.

We hope these will be useful and help all our users fully leverage the Zoom platform to enhance their communications capabilities. Contact us today if you have questions on specific Zoom features. And as Zoom continues to release new features and upgrades to its platform, we will keep you updated with more tips and tricks to help you get the most out of your experience. Get more details and a few more useful tips & tricks by watching the full recording of the "Zoom Like a Zoomie" session here: https://youtu.be/SGAblwPi4lI

They're here! We've compiled all the great content from Zoomtopia in one place for your viewing pleasure. Check out our Zoomtopia 2019 YouTube playlist to see the product and celebrity keynotes and dozens of other informative sessions from our annual user conference. And be sure to bookmark zoomtopia.us to keep up to date on all the happenings for Zoomtopia 2020!