This week, I was teaching a bunch of educators from South Africa to drive the technology for a high-profile online event. There’s loads for them to think about: registration, breakout rooms, translation into local languages… not to mention power cuts and internet bandwidth.
And when it comes to on-the-day confidence as a ‘tech host’ or ‘producer’, there’s no substitute for practice – ideally in the same Zoom space you’ll be using on the day.
The thing is, there are a lot of Zoom settings. And they matter. For example, breakout rooms may be essential to your meeting or event design. What if that function was switched off by mistake?
All that means you need to know about two specific settings, and perhaps use them – even though Zoom keeps them very quiet (presumably because of legitimate security concerns, see below).
1. The “always on” meeting
Because Zoom settings can very so much, and be changed so easily, even for one specific meeting, your practice needs to happen in the same Zoom space you’ll be using on the day.
But by default, Zoom meetings happen on a specific time and date. Huh?
So, when you set up your Zoom meeting, set it up to be “always on”.
Here’s how to do that (assuming that your organisation’s Admin allows it):
- Log in to your account on the Zoom website (not the app)
- In your personal meeting settings, switch on “Allow participants to join before host”
- Go to “Schedule a meeting”
- Below the “When” fields, there’s a tickbox, “Recurring meeting”. Tick that
- Some extra settings will appear. Alongside “Recurrence” select “No Fixed Time” from the drop-down menu
- Make sure the tickbox alongside “Waiting Room” is unticked, so people can walk straight in
- Click “SAVE” and harvest the joining info – Zoom link, Meeting UD, passcode – as usual
You and your colleagues can now pop into that specific meeting at any time, as long as the host isn’t running another meeting.
REMEMBER: be cautious about sharing the link to such a meeting because, of course, anyone who has the link can dive in – with potentially unwanted consequences. Never publish the joining details of any Zoom meeting directly to the internet.
2. The easy way for a colleague to become the meeting host
In Zoom, the “Host” of a meeting has various powers, such as the ability to make others Co-host, to mute people to enable and disable the waiting room etc.
But what if the person who scheduled your meeting isn’t available for your rehearsal session? Or for the event itself?
In this situation, people often share passwords to log on as a colleague – but that can cause all sorts of chaos and confusion.
There is a better way: the “Claim Host” key.
- First, the original Host needs to log into their own account on the Zoom website (not the app)
- Find the Host Key. It’s in their Profile, just below their Personal Meeting ID, and it’s hidden – click on the little eyelash graphic to reveal it
- Make a note of the six-digit number and share it ONLY WITH TRUSTED COLLEAGUES, ASKING THEM TO KEEP IT SAFE
Anyone joining a meeting set up by that Host, where the Host is not yet present, can use the Host Key to become the Host of the meeting
- Go to the list of Participants in the meeting
- Click on the “Claim Host” button at the bottom of the panel
- Copy-paste in the six-digit code
REMEMBER: be cautious about sharing the Claim Host key because, of course, anyone who has it can become the meeting host – with potentially unwanted consequences. Don’t even think about publishing your Host Key directly to the internet, and change it if you think it has become public.