We recently posted about concerns relating to privacy and security of Zoom app. And we suggested alternatives to using Zoom. But if you are using Zoom to video meet people, out of personal choice or obligations from a peer group, here’s a list of our finds that should help you lead the pack. And handle video conferences on Zoom like a pro!
Annotations
Video meeting attendees can annotate on the shared screen using available options. This tool is so indispensable, you realize its value when you want to touch the whiteboard in order to make your point. Simply go to the floating menu and click “View options” and select “Annotate”. Users can share a variety of things as annotations on the shared screen. Arrow annotations are a good medium to put pointers on things you want to stress upon. And the arrow annotation stamps get presenter’s name on them and allows viewers to annotate too. You can easily clear the drawing with a button. May use the Undo button too.
Presenters can use “Spotlight” option where the cursor gets a spotlight around it and help viewers stay on the same page of the discussion, quite literally.
Meeting host has the option to disable participant annotations altogether.
Shortcut Keys
Using shortcut keys does save the effort of going through the menus and look dumb while the video is still on. A free Zoom meeting can be had anywhere from 2 to 50 attendees. And there can be times when all of a sudden you hear background noise emanating from one of the participants’ devices. How do you avoid such a situation without interrupting your presentation and asking all guests to mute their mics? Just hit Alt + M on PC your keyboard or Cmd + Ctrl + M on Mac and avoid distraction. As people maybe anywhere away from the office, like at home where dog barks or baby cries, or might as well be on the road.
Hide the floating menu
Although the floating Zoom meeting menu is loading with several useful tools to handle the meeting like a pro, it can sometimes be intrusive to your presentation. For example, when you are switching between chrome browser tabs, you might accidentally hit the Stop sharing button. This will obviously cut your video relay to the participants, avoid it by going to More > Hide floating meeting controls. There’s a shortcut for that too, but you’ll have to grind up those grey cells a bit, it goes like this – Ctrl+Alt+Shift+H. Once you’re done with tab shuffling, just hit Escape and you’ll have the floating menu back in no time.
Options in the floating menu
Apart from hiding it, you can also use the “New share” and “Pause share” buttons. During your presentation, when you need to move from the Presentation window to say a Document window, just hit “New Share” button and select the source path to the document. This will immediately move the presentation screen to Document screen and hide the minimizing and maximizing actions done at the presenter’s end. And no one will see your desktop accidentally, the viewers are instantly taken to the next screen. “New share” maintains privacy and provides a smooth transition. “Pause share” can be used when want to review your notes or lookup some details on the internet during an ongoing presentation. The attendee screen will freeze and the presenter can toggle between screens without causing any break in the presentation flow. You can resume the presentation by clicking “Resume share” and you’re cruising smoothly again.
Turn off my video
This may sound trivial but bloopers do happen in these items are ignored. You might accidentally share your desktop cam stream to a meeting where you are intended to be an audience. Avoid this by going into your Zoom app setting and select Turn off video by default when joining a meeting. This way your video stays off by default. In case you forget to make these changes in settings, you cans till turn off your video by ticking the checkbox when you are about to join a meeting. Check the box next to “Turn off my video”.
Use Virtual Backgrounds in Zoom
Well, now MS Teams has also started to offer this option, it has been there in Zoom for quite some time now. You may be at home, in your garage, kitchen, at a café when you start your video meeting on Zoom. And you do not want ambient visuals to distract your audiences, you simply change the background to a still image or a video. This feature comes in handy for entrepreneurs or freelancers when they can use their business Logo as background. Branding at no extra cost!
Use calendar Add-ons for video meetings
Once you add Zoom add-on to your chrome browser you’re your Google Calendar, you get a plethora of custom options for your meeting right at the time you schedule them. Add-on also available for mail clients like MS Outlook.
When you set timings for your Zoom video conferencing, you get additional buttons and options right there. Just select Make it a Zoom meeting. Best of all is that when the time for the meeting comes, you just hit “Join Zoom meeting” button from your calendar and instantly join the meeting.
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