The ongoing Corona pandemic when stopped the flow of this entire globe, and the necessity of working from home emerged as the most influential pursuit for working professionals.
The video conferencing tool called Zoom encashed this unprecedented opportunity and became one of the most popular among all its contemporaries. However, Zoom has not acquired this opportunity accidentally. The huge range of functionalities of Zoom is unmatched; thereby, it got peoples’ attention within this short period.
In this article, we are about to discuss some of the most useful tips and tricks regarding this application. Although there are a plethora of other utilities of this application, on this list, we have focused majorly on the productivity enhancement, security, and fun factors of this application.
15 Useful Zoom Tips and Tricks
1 Add a Virtual Background
This feature is a lifesaver if you are working from home, and your house is full of mess. With this feature, you can turn your messy room into a professional-looking office environment. There are many preloaded custom backgrounds provided by Zoom. However, you can even change the background with your stored images.
Though, this feature requires a huge amount of processing and graphical processing power. If your computer does have powerful hardware, then this software could detect any face in real time in a seamless manner.
To activate this feature, all you have to do is find the ‘Cogwheel’ icon to enter the Settings page and shift to the ‘Virtual Background‘ tab. On the virtual background page, you will have many different backgrounds as per your convenience you can choose any.
2 Mute and Unmute Your Mic Quickly
If you ever experienced video conferencing with an unmuted microphone then you might know the discomfort quite! This tip is the most effective and easy to maintain while conferencing. This habit also creates a positive impression among the teammates while conferencing.
You can simply press the space bar to unmute your microphone while on an ongoing meeting or conference. And when you have only to listen to others or have nothing to contribute, just keep the microphone on mute to maintain ease. Just by pressing the space bar you can mute and unmute the mic whenever you want, how simple is that?
However, this habit also helps to save some amount of overhead bandwidth usage of any user. You have to visit the Settings page to activate this initially. Just go to Settings, and from there, go to the Audio option and activate the option called ‘Mute my Microphone When Joining a Meeting’. After this, one-time effort, you do not have to worry about any further setting complications.
3 Disable Video when Joining Meeting
Sometimes the mind does not work properly under pressure. Whenever we do work from home, we often face the urgency of attending conferences within the blink of an eye; thereby, we sometimes forget about our professionalism and start the conference with an unsuitable appearance.
To avoid such awkward accidental moves under any stress, we can permanently turn off the Video at the commencement of any conference. Later, you can start the video in fact amid a conference if you feel so.
To turn off it you have to go to the Settings page again and then go to the Video section. From this page, tick the option “Turn off my video when joining a meeting,” and there you go.
4 Useful Keyboard Shortcuts
If you know the shortcuts well, then you probably finish earliest! This rule is universal and applicable in any circumstance. Thus knowing the shortcuts to the Zoom application could make you an expert on this application just like our previously mentioned tip of ‘mute and unmute’.
By pressing some simple combinations of keys irrespective of the operating interface, you can accomplish much-complicated processing within a while.
- To turn on or off a video: Alt + V or Command + Shift + V
- To turn on or off the screen sharing among partners: Alt + S or Command + Shift + S
- To take screenshots while conferencing: Alt + Shift + T or Command + T
- To turn on or off the offline video recording: Alt + R or Command + Shift + R
- Read online addressee name: Ctrl + 2 or Command + 2
Zoom also offers a ‘Global Shortcuts’ facility; this means when the application is running from the background also then you can apply some short keys to control the interface of Zoom.
But, to utilize this optionality, you have to activate it first by opening the settings section, and then under the Keyboard Shortcuts section, you need to activate the Global parameter. This tip is worth remembering to maintain operational ease while using this.
5 Enable Gallery View
If you really want to monitor all the team members visually and to check what is going on during a conferencing, then this Gallery view is the best to solve your purpose. Personally, I prefer this view a lot and as per the public opinion, this view is widely used among people.
However, if you are conferencing among a handful of teammates, then this view would work otherwise, with a huge number of participants, you would not be able to locate anyone clearly with this viewing option. To activate this view, you just have to click the ‘Gallery View’ on the top right corner of the Zoom application interface.
6 Automatically Copy Invitation URL
If you are a regular on Zoom video conferencing, then this feature could save a hell lot of time for you. This global feature actually copies the invitation URL to join the video conference you host to the clipboard so that people could get it automatically.
To activate this global setting, you have to go to the settings tab, and from there open the general tab. Just authorize the Global feature termed ‘Automatically copy invitation URL once the meeting starts‘.
You will have the tick option here to activate it, and after activating it, you will be able to share the URL to Slack, WhatsApp, and any kind of social media application as well as.
7 Use Snap Camera on Zoom
The concept of beauty filters in the Snapchat application and its enormous success among video callers actually inspired Zoom to integrate the snap camera application into the Zoom interface.
People who use this application to video chat with their friends can apply these masks or filters to entertain their friends. Moreover, you could make any particular mask your default while calling.
However, there is no utility of this feature for working professionals who only use this application for their office and business purpose. To activate this snap camera feature, you need to download the Snap Camera application from the internet and install it.
Using the Snap camera, you have to click a picture with any of the lens filters and then open the settings interface of Zoom. Now you have to change the default camera to a Snap camera from the ‘Video’ section of the settings page. Now enjoy the Zoom application with a flavor of Snapchat!
8 Share Your Screen
There are enormous advantages to the screen-sharing features of Zoom. Possibly this option is the most versatile functionality offered by Zoom because you could access someone’s system with your system through this software.
By sharing access and screen, employees could ask for assistance with anything from their co-workers; also, you could have fun like sharing a movie with your beloved one. At the bottom of the interface, you will have the ‘Share Screen’ option.
By pressing this, you can start sharing. This application also offers a choice between sharing the screen completely, and partially you can choose any of them as per your requirement. Also, it offers, turning off/on-facility of the computer sound while performing screen sharing.
9 Integrate Third-party Apps
With a single click, you can integrate a much more useful third-party application into the interface of Zoom. You just have to add the application from the application marketplace, if you want to participate in a Microsoft Team meeting from Zoom, then it’s as easy as mentioned.
Even, you can synchronize all your appointments and meetings from your Google or Outlook calendar. You can add your contacts from Slack and start video conversations with this feature. You just have to have an attached extension for that.
This functionality has much use as it could attach any available third-party extension as per your need, and you should definitely take advantage of this wonderful feature offered by Zoom.
10 Enable Local Recording
If you have to attain a crucial meeting on Zoom, then you have additional liberty to record that video conference for the future. Yes! With some easy clicks, you can record and store an entire conversation on your local hard drive.
During the conference period, you just have to click on the ‘Record‘ button on the screen, and after recording, you will have that file in the ‘Documents‘ folder of your computer.
However, Zoom provides its premium clients with an additional facility for storing these recorded files on their cloud server.
11 Enhance Your Look
The current trend of beautifying your look with filters is also available on Zoom. You can diminish the hardness of skin tone and patches to improve the video quality using these native filters.
This feature actually gives a pro look even after having a poor-quality camera. To activate it, you have to again go to the Settings page, and there under the Video section, you will see ‘Touch up my appearance’ just tick it to activate.
12 Audio Transcript
This feature is one of the most essential and useful. However, this is not available in the free version of the application. This feature ‘Audio Transcription’ enables the user to record the conference or a crucial part of the meeting in a readable VTT text format.
This computerized transcription of meetings gives the user additional support while attending anything very crucial. So if you have opted for the paid membership, then without further ado, let’s open the settings section to enable the ‘Cloud recording’.
Thence click on the ‘Advanced Cloud Recording Settings’ to activate the ‘Audio Transcript‘ option. After activating this setting whenever you attend any meeting or video conferencing, choose the cloud recording facility from the bottom of the interface to start the transcription.
After this, you will also get an email notification regarding confirmation of this service.
13 Schedule Meetings
Likewise, like other popular video conferencing applications, zoom has its own mechanism to schedule important events and meetings.
However, with the desktop application, you can schedule meetings in a complex and slow manner, whereas with the Chrome extension ‘Zoom scheduler’, you can do it within a short while.
With the Chrome extension of the app, the scheduling process also gives lesser complications to the users.
14 Waiting Room
As per recent Zoom security concerns, especially the incident of the unauthorized intervention of hackers amid a conference, people are scared of using Zoom, and many countries have already published several security-related warnings to their citizens.
Thus, we are going to enlighten you about some security features of this application tightening the security so that you can protect your system from any sort of mishaps.
The Waiting Room feature is one of the most essential security features of Zoom to grant participants one after one. Further, you can hold all members in the waiting room if you want to.
To enable this again, you have to go to the settings page, and from there, visit the ‘Account Management‘ section. From here, you can activate the Waiting room option. You can even choose to keep a user or multiple users in the room.
You can also select among all participants, Guest Participants, and participants who do not hold an account on Zoom. Further, you can grant your conference mates to allow participants from the Waiting Room to the actual meeting. However, this feature is again only available to paid subscribers, which might annoy some users.
15 Breakout Room
Sometimes controlling a large meeting or webinar becomes quite difficult for a single host. Zoom allows you up to 100 participants at a stretch for the free version of the application, and for paid, it provides up to 500 participants.
Thereby, it offers you functionality for splitting out the meetings into many chambers with separate sessions where the primary host will distribute participants to the sub-hosts.
To activate it, you have to enable the settings first from the application. After opening, the Settings page move to the Breakout room option and click on the toggle. Although this feature is not for free users.
Use These Key Features of Zoom
I hope that you found some tips useful as per your work requirement. However, there are many more advantages of this application, which you could find on the internet.
This article contains the 15 most versatile and useful things to do with your Zoom application, from security to fun; we have offered at least something for any type of user. After going through the entire article, we hope you will be able to understand and control this application in a better manner.
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