How to become a zoom pro:
It doesn't matter if you work remotely, if you work from home, or if you work from an office, chances are you are using video conferencing more and more often. So, I wanna share with you seven of my favorite tips for getting the most out of Zoom meetings.
Hello everyone I am Shaad Khan, And let's dive right in.
1) Shortcut Keys :
My very first tip for you has to do with one of my favorite shortcut keys. open up the participant's window. often there are at least five, seven, 10, 20 or more people together on 1 call, and suddenly there's some background noise and it's interrupting either your presentation or something that you are saying at the moment. So this shortcut key gives you the ability to mute everyone, instantaneously. Now yes, you can select that Mute All option, but you don't always have this window open, you may be in the middle of showing or doing something else. So all you need to do is select Alt+M on your keyboard, and that will immediately mute everyone else. Alt+M, of course, for PC, it is command control M, if you happen to be a Mac user. Now, this can be really helpful, especially if someone else is working remotely, and you hear a dog barking or some other background noise on someone else's line.
2)Screen Sharing :
So let's say you have shared your screen. when you are sharing your screen, a little floating menu, which is very helpful as I make different options here, it sorts of hides many of your tabs. And you can see, your tab open right there.
You don't know how many times someone has accidentally stopped sharing because I actually wanted to select this browser tab, but I hit Stop Sharing instead. Well, there is a way that we can minimize this all together. And what you need to do is come over to more, and come all the way down to Hide Floating Meeting Controls. Now yes, there is a shortcut key Ctrl+Alt+Shift+H, I don't know how mucho f a shortcut that is if you need four keys to do so. So I usually just select this manually. But if you select this, you can see that that floating Zoom menu is gone. So now you can go there, and click through all these tabs at ease. Nothing is in your way. And if you need to get back to that menu, all I need to do is select scape on your keyboard. One more time hide floating meeting controls, it's will tell you right there, to press escape. If you need to show it again, you can go about my presentation and can use your computer the way you want. And then you can hit escape to get that menu back and visible to you.
3)Some Special Settings :
Hit the little gear icon, which is called Settings. Now there's an awful lot of settings that you can tweak and adjust here within Zoom, but you gotta focus on two important ones, or at least they're very important to me. The first one is under Video and yes, you can preview your video, you can choose a different camera if you need to here as well. But the one that I always turn on is, turn off my video when joining a meeting. By default, whether I'm the host or whether I'm joining someone else's Zoom meeting, I want my video to be turned off.
Now the reasoning for this, is that I wanna make sure that I initiate that video. I don't wanna click on something and then forget that "Oh, yeah, that's right, "I'm on video and, and what's behind me or what's going on, "do I have my mic set up?" All of this type of thing. So by default, I wanna have my video turned off when I either host or join any type of Zoom meeting and then I can initiate it, right? I can initiate it with a single click. The other tip that I wanna share with you here within settings has to do with video, but it has to do with something that's called Virtual Background. And this is something that Zoom has had for a little while, but maybe you've never experimented with the virtual background before. So you can just see the background of your place there. But what zoom allows you to do, is to upload other images that you would like to add as your background, and you don't need a green screen. You can just select one of your images and put them as your background. I use this virtual background more and more often, is number one, I don't have to care about what's going on in the background. I may be at a busy cafe, I may be working from my kitchen at home, and I don't have to worry about that
4)Scheduling your meetings :
Open Google Calendar, I suggest you download and use the add ons or extensions for your calendar. So You could see up there the little icon, this allows you to schedule a meeting if I want to, or I can start a meeting immediately. It even gives you conveniently the option to start with video off, or start with a video on. But the other bonus, as you can see here, is meeting within Google calendars, you have an additional button, called Make it a Zoom Meeting. So as I'm adding the title, and my guests, and maybe a few other details, with just a single click, I can say make it a zoom meeting. And there you'll get the meeting link, under the location area. And if you scroll down to the description, it's got all the other great information, which your guests are going to need, whether it's the link, I mean, they can click this link right away, but depending on where they are, they can use the one-tap mobile option. If they need to dial in by phone, if they can't connect by audio, by their computer, they can choose one of these dial-in numbers as well, all in a single click. And then when you come back in here, when it's time for this meeting, all I have to do is select Join the Zoom Meeting.
5)New options Share and Pause Share :
There are two New options Share and Pause Share. So share
your screen, pretty common, pretty standard here within Zoom. But a lot of people are not familiar with what these actually mean, or how they should be using them. So in this case, if You wanna move from this, you wanna go to a Word document, all you need to do is select New Share, and now go and find that other document or that other place, that you would like to share. So let's say it is a Word document, so you are gonna click on your Word document. Remember, no one in your meeting is seeing this window. you are seeing this because you are the organizer and is wanting to share something at the moment. As soon as you click on this, the Word document and select Share, you are instantly taken to that Word document, and so is everyone else that is viewing this screen share. So they don't see any of that, they don't see you looking for a folder, nothing along with those likes. And if you wanna go back up there, and you say New Share, and you wanna go back to the web, you can select it and say Share, you are instantaneously brought back here. So you can remove all sorts of that clunky feeling of minimizing, maximizing, finding the thing that you wanna share next, make it a really smooth transition for those people who are at the meeting with you.
The other one is Pause Share. Now this can be used very similarly if I want to say, you know, just pause, and here you can see your screen sharing is paused, and then I could go and find that document. But the other great thing I find about the pause function is that let's say I'm giving a presentation, I want to review some notes, or I want to go look something else up, but I don't want everyone else to know that I'm looking that up orI'm finding this special number or whatever the case may be, I can hit pause and they can remain on this screen, it's as if nothing else has happened. I can go back and find some information, go reference a file, that type of thing. And then when I'm ready, I can just say Resume Share, and here I am back on this screen. I can hit pause, and I could go somewhere else as well if I want to, but take a look at both New Share and PauseShare to make your presentations and make your screen sharing just a little more polished. And then the last thing, the final tip today that I wanna share with you has to do with annotations. Something that I think it's overlooked. Here it is, it's the very last option before More, and yet it's so valuable. If you click Annotate, there's a variety of different ways that you can highlight things on your screen. A few of my favorites would be Spotlight. Here, it adds a little red spotlight, so if people have trouble following your cursor, you wanna make sure people know exactly what you're talking about, they can follow you along with with this little red spotlight. There's also this little arrow, it's like an arrow stamp. So if I want people to look at this Guests field, I can click over here, or I can highlight and then click. Do you see this little white arrow, no one is seeing this, no one on my meeting is actually seeing this. It's not until I click on it, it's gonna put this little stamp here with my name, so they know that I'm the one who placed it there. Because remember, you can allow other people to annotate as well. And if you want to undo or redo, you can always click these buttons here as well, or hit clear to clear all of your drawings. You can draw, you can add text, you can add other stamps. This arrow is a little bit different. This allows you to keep permanent arrows. So instead of one at a time, I can go down a variety of fields here. And again, I can hit undo if I wanna go back, or just clear all my drawing. So Annotate can be a really helpful one as well.
4)Scheduling your meetings :
Open Google Calendar, I suggest you download and use the add ons or extensions for your calendar. So You could see up there the little icon, this allows you to schedule a meeting if I want to, or I can start a meeting immediately. It even gives you conveniently the option to start with video off, or start with a video on. But the other bonus, as you can see here, is meeting within Google calendars, you have an additional button, called Make it a Zoom Meeting. So as I'm adding the title, and my guests, and maybe a few other details, with just a single click, I can say make it a zoom meeting. And there you'll get the meeting link, under the location area. And if you scroll down to the description, it's got all the other great information, which your guests are going to need, whether it's the link, I mean, they can click this link right away, but depending on where they are, they can use the one-tap mobile option. If they need to dial in by phone, if they can't connect by audio, by their computer, they can choose one of these dial-in numbers as well, all in a single click. And then when you come back in here, when it's time for this meeting, all I have to do is select Join the Zoom Meeting.
5)New options Share and Pause Share :
There are two New options Share and Pause Share. So share
your screen, pretty common, pretty standard here within Zoom. But a lot of people are not familiar with what these actually mean, or how they should be using them. So in this case, if You wanna move from this, you wanna go to a Word document, all you need to do is select New Share, and now go and find that other document or that other place, that you would like to share. So let's say it is a Word document, so you are gonna click on your Word document. Remember, no one in your meeting is seeing this window. you are seeing this because you are the organizer and is wanting to share something at the moment. As soon as you click on this, the Word document and select Share, you are instantly taken to that Word document, and so is everyone else that is viewing this screen share. So they don't see any of that, they don't see you looking for a folder, nothing along with those likes. And if you wanna go back up there, and you say New Share, and you wanna go back to the web, you can select it and say Share, you are instantaneously brought back here. So you can remove all sorts of that clunky feeling of minimizing, maximizing, finding the thing that you wanna share next, make it a really smooth transition for those people who are at the meeting with you.
The other one is Pause Share. Now this can be used very similarly if I want to say, you know, just pause, and here you can see your screen sharing is paused, and then I could go and find that document. But the other great thing I find about the pause function is that let's say I'm giving a presentation, I want to review some notes, or I want to go look something else up, but I don't want everyone else to know that I'm looking that up orI'm finding this special number or whatever the case may be, I can hit pause and they can remain on this screen, it's as if nothing else has happened. I can go back and find some information, go reference a file, that type of thing. And then when I'm ready, I can just say Resume Share, and here I am back on this screen. I can hit pause, and I could go somewhere else as well if I want to, but take a look at both New Share and PauseShare to make your presentations and make your screen sharing just a little more polished. And then the last thing, the final tip today that I wanna share with you has to do with annotations. Something that I think it's overlooked. Here it is, it's the very last option before More, and yet it's so valuable. If you click Annotate, there's a variety of different ways that you can highlight things on your screen. A few of my favorites would be Spotlight. Here, it adds a little red spotlight, so if people have trouble following your cursor, you wanna make sure people know exactly what you're talking about, they can follow you along with with this little red spotlight. There's also this little arrow, it's like an arrow stamp. So if I want people to look at this Guests field, I can click over here, or I can highlight and then click. Do you see this little white arrow, no one is seeing this, no one on my meeting is actually seeing this. It's not until I click on it, it's gonna put this little stamp here with my name, so they know that I'm the one who placed it there. Because remember, you can allow other people to annotate as well. And if you want to undo or redo, you can always click these buttons here as well, or hit clear to clear all of your drawings. You can draw, you can add text, you can add other stamps. This arrow is a little bit different. This allows you to keep permanent arrows. So instead of one at a time, I can go down a variety of fields here. And again, I can hit undo if I wanna go back, or just clear all my drawing. So Annotate can be a really helpful one as well.
So I'd love to hear from you next. Which of these five tips was your favorite? And did I miss anything? Is there a special Zoom meeting tip that you love to use? Make sure you share that with me, and if you liked these tips and tricks make sure to comment and share this with your friends and family.
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