Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Tips on securing a Zoom meeting

Going to have a zoom meeting?  Especially a large one? 50, 100, 500 people attending?
This document focuses around large meetings where you might have 25+ people joining in a type of forum that might be more one way.  Such as a large classroom or presentation.

Here's some tips to make the meeting go smoother with less unwanted interruptions. 

1> Practice.  First and foremost you have to get to know the Zoom client and the nuances.  Jumping into host a zoom meeting and not knowing how to handle situations isn't a fault of the product.

2>Minimize attendee feature access- For a large meeting, 25+ you need to ensure you minimize features.

3>Secure your meeting to ensure, if you are the main presenter, that you have minimized potential distractions from attendees, to you or your other invited guests.

4>Spread out meeting administration with co-hosts..  Delegate responsibilities of aspects of a large meeting to other co-hosts.  If you are hosting the meeting, assign a cohost to monitors the attendees, even the mute/unmute of users.  Have them scan the attendees to ensure they aren't doing something in Chat or on the video


PRACTICE:
You simply have to know the controls in ZOOM.  They aren't complicated, and knowing this will ensure you can have a successful meeting.  You need to learn the nuisances of Zoom and where certain controls are and how to quickly get to them.  Create meetings, join them with other computers or devices.  Learn what the experience is like for attendees based on different control settings you apply.  Whats the impact of 'unmute all' and 'let attendees unmute themselves'?  I've been in meetings where this absolutely ruined the experience because hosts didn't know the difference.
How do you prevent an attendee from hijacking your screen share?  And how do you lock it so that only certain users can perform screen shares?  All things you have to learn else you are only setting yourself up for potential trouble..

Minimize Distractions

You absolutely must remove as many unwanted interruptions that attendees can do to your meeting, malicious or not.  People aren't always meeting savey or computer or phone savey.  The simple ability to ensure one has muted themselves can be challenging.  You, as the meeting host, must take control of this from the start.

Here's some settings i suggest

Log into your personal account for your meetings, assuming you are the host.
Here's some settings I would configure.

  Goto zoom.us and Sign IN




Now select SETTINGS

A number of features will be available to you.



Participants Video - Set OFF

Large meeting a whole bunch of videos is usually distracting.  People will turn them on, and there are modes further down to control that.  I leave them off by default in large meetings because that many videos, if they are not participating, is not usually useful.  Its usually far more distracting.

Join before host - Set OFF
If you are having a large meeting and you want to control the attendees, this is a good thing to set to OFF.  Attendees will get a message saying they have connected successfully, but that the host hasn't started the meeting yet.

Mute participants upon entry - (ON)
If you have a large number of people all joining, it will be a noisy affair of background noise, people talking, usually not knowing their mic is live.  You must control the sound!
This is only fully effective if you lock the ability for users to unmute themselves once the meeting has started:

Once you have started the meeting, you want to then you will want to make sure the entry for "Allow Participants to Unmute Themselves" is NOT check marked.  You want to limit the ability for attendees to change the state of their microphone.  Co-hosts can unmute themselves and other attendees.

Feedback to Zoom  (OFF)


Co-host - (ON)

Cohosts by default have similar privileges to hosts, they can mute/unmute themselves and others and can share their screens.

Allow host to put attendee on hold - (ON)

Discovered a trouble maker, this is great way to stop them.

Always show meeting control toolbar 
- (ON)

keep the controls from disappearing for attendees.


Screen sharing - (ON)

Who can share?  Select Host Only
       

        By setting this as "Host Only" ensures that you (or a co-host) are the only ones you can share.


Show a "Join from your browser" link - (ON)



SECURING

Allow Hosts to put attendee on hold - very handy.  Someone being a problem, convenient way to handle it.

Require a password = This is up to you, it really can help bigger meetings, especially if the meetings have the potential of being crashed by unwanted people who have gotten the meeting number, or are just guessing.  This isn't fool proof, but it can slow unwanted guests down if that is a concern.  

Screen sharing - ONLY HOSTS can share - easily have someone share a screen without intervention and take over a meeting, knowingly or unknowingly.

Allow removed participants to rejoin - up to you.  depends on if you have someone joining causing problems.

Waiting room - this allows you to screen the users joining your meeting.  This can be difficult to manage in a large meeting if you are presenting.  Deligates to your meeting to handle it is where this is very useful.

When you start the meeting, click on participants - ensure MUTE on entry is selected.
Unselect Allow participants to umnute themselves
Unselect allow participants to rename themselves
And know how to lock a meeting.

Spread the work load
Assign a co-host in large meetings to handle the operation of users, muting/unmuting etc.
You may have another co-host handling the chat responses
Co-host dedicated to managing possible screen sharing, maybe you are sharing a power point, you can have multiple co-hosts doing events in your room on your behalf.

Consider a YouTube channel to broadcast your meeting to.  If your presentation requires minimal feedback from  attendees (voice/video responses) then the one-way YouTube is a great way to allow people to join your meeting without having to install the zoom application and configure it.

Meeting Etiquette
Let the people joining know the state of their system.  You can remind them they are muted or video is off.

Requests can be made through the client to be unmuted

Join early - As the host, be prepared when you are having a large meeting.  have something on the screen that at least acknolwedges that they are in the right meeting.  Could be just a shared PAINT picture that says "Meeting starts at X:XX time"

Participant join/departure Sounds.  Nothing wrecks a large meeting worse than a "beep join/leave" tone and the useless name announcement recording interrupting all the time.  Small meeting of 5-10 people, not a big deal.  200 people?  Its distracting and overrides your voice if you are presenting.

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