Not everything in Zoom needs to be a "Meeting"

Some simple best practice advice for Zoom

Did you know that Zoom can be used for different forms of communication? Once you have downloaded and signed into the Zoom app, you will have access to some useful functionality.

When you were in the office, you would communicate / engage with your colleagues in different ways depending on the situation or subject matter. Here are some examples of how Zoom can help replace those types of interaction:

• Quick chat in the corridor or by popping into their office: Zoom chat allows for quick and easy messaging between colleagues. Search for their name in the Zoom directory (The “Jump To” box at the top left of the messaging tab) and start messaging them.

• Want to message chat with more people? Creating a “chat channel” is a good way to chat with a larger team of people.

• Call someone from your desk phone: The Zoom app allows you to call someone directly (with or without video) for a voice chat. Search for their name using “Jump To”, select their name to see the chat history, right click on their name and click “meet without video”. Remember that not all calls require “video”, and a short voice-only chat may be more suitable.

• Wondering if a colleague is free or busy: The Zoom app will show you the “presence” or status of other users. It displays if they are online within the Zoom app, have a calendar event booked, on a call with someone or away from their desk.

• Have a more formal meeting where everyone gathers in a meeting room: The Zoom meetings function is probably the one that most people are familiar with. There can be a tendency to overuse this, where perhaps one of the options above would have been sufficient.

If there is a need to create a meeting, it is good practice to keep the meeting under an hour, have an agenda, and allow for a break if it needs to go on longer.

Other things to consider are starting your meetings at 5-past, or ending them 10 minutes to the hour, giving staff a chance to have a coffee or a comfort break, which is especially important for people who have back-to-back meetings.

Remember, not all work questions require a meeting to be booked, so a short voice call (replicating a phone call) or sending a user a Zoom message may save time for everyone.

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Page created: 08/08/2022 07:55:19 - Last updated 08/08/2022 07:59:16