Zoom: Before You Join

Hello, my name is Ricky Enger. And today we're going to talk about the process of joining a zoom meeting. Zoom is everywhere and it's not just something that's used for work meetings, although that is one place where it's really popular.

It's also being used to bring friends together for coffee and conversation. It's a tool that we use here at Hadley for our discussion groups. And it's even used for family gatherings when everyone can't be physically in the same room together. What's really cool about it is that there are lots of different ways to join. And you can choose the one that feels most comfortable to you but before you can join a zoom meeting, you're going to get an invitation that has all the details you need. So let's check out a typical zoom invitation and talk about what's in it and then what to do with that information.

Okay. So usually we get our zoom invitations by email like the one we've got open here. First, we've got the name of the person inviting us to the meeting. And then just below that, there's the meeting topic. And then just below that we have our meeting time. Great. All that makes sense. So what's next. Well, this is where the fun starts because we have a decision to make. Remember earlier when we talked about how zoom is so versatile because we have several ways to join our meetings?

Let's explore our choices since the way we want to join is going to determine which info we need to pay attention to in our zoom invite here. So to make this decision, take a moment and think about the devices you have and where you feel most comfortable. If technology seems a little overwhelming in the idea of dialing a few numbers on a phone key pad sounds good, then zoom's join by phone option will be perfect. For this option, you'll be dialing a number and you'll then be asked to enter a meeting ID. This means it will be helpful to have the phone number and the meeting ID in a format that's easy for you to access while you're dialing the phone. It will also be helpful to be really familiar with your phone's keypad since zoom gives you a limited amount of time to enter your meeting ID.

By the way, Hadley actually has a workshop series called Staying Connected. And it has some great tips for taking notes as well as for dialing your phone by touch. Be sure and check that out if you'd like to brush up on those skills.

Now, our dial in option is great but we do have a couple of other choices as well. We can actually join our meeting with an app on a smartphone, or we can join from a computer. So how do we decide? Well, if you have a computer, how comfortable do you feel with it? If you can open an email, open a link, and select a button or two inside a program, those are the skills you'll need for using zoom. If all sounds good, there's just one more thing to think about.

Do you have a microphone so people can hear you? If you're using a laptop, there's one built in already. If your computer isn't a laptop, you probably don't have a built in microphone. In that case, there are headsets available that have microphones included, or there are microphones that sit on your desk. If all that is ready to go for you, awesome. If not, no worries because there's another way to join that doesn't involve your computer at all.

So for this option, the first bit of information to consider is whether or not you have a smartphone, like an iPhone or an Android phone. If you do, using an app makes a lot of sense. And here's why. There's no need to worry about dialing long distance since everything is happening through the internet. There's also no need to quickly dial a number and then quickly enter the code to get into the meeting. There're just a couple of things to think about with this approach.

First, it only works on smartphones such as iPhones or phones using Android. If you have a Blindshell phone, a Jitterbug phone, or pretty much any other phone that has physical buttons instead of a smooth glass surface, chances are that you don't have a smartphone. So our zoom app won't work for you.

The next thing to think about is how comfortable you feel using an app on your smartphone. If you can open your email or web page that has your zoom invitation information and you're comfortable exploring an app to find buttons, this'll be a great choice.

Alright. So now that we've thought about how we're going to join our meeting, let's take a look again at our meeting invite. We won't actually join a meeting today. We just need to figure out which information to pay attention to here. So first we have a link and if you're looking for it to stand out visually, it's blue and it's also underlined. So this is what we'll open to join our meeting. We'll use this if we're joining from our computer or from the app on our smartphone.

Below our lower link, we have our zoom meeting ID. This ID will be entered for us automatically if we're using the link and opening zoom on our computer or the app. But if we're dialing by phone, we definitely want to take note of this number.

Okay. So below that we have something called one tap mobile. This is really cool for people who have an iPhone and don't want to use the zoom app. If we have our zoom invite open on our iPhone and we tap on this, our iPhone will automatically dial our zoom number just as if we were dialing it on our key pad. It'll pause for a bit and then it'll enter our meeting code. We've got two of these one tap numbers to choose from. But if dialing long distance doesn't add anything to your phone bill, it actually doesn't matter which one we choose. Remember though, we can only tap on this and make it work on an iPhone.

Okay. So let's scroll down a bit more. And now we have text that says dial from your location. And below that there are lots of different numbers we can choose from. Now just like our one tap mobile option, it doesn't matter which of these numbers we make note of if dialing long distance doesn't charge extra. If you plan to join by phone, just make note of one of these numbers in the list here and you'll dial that number to get connected to zoom. Don't forget to also make note of the meeting ID which is just below the join link in blue that we mentioned earlier.

Finally, if we scroll down just a bit more past all these numbers, we have one more link, which says find your local number. For some of us, long distance charges do happen. The zoom invite we have here lists numbers in the U S and maybe you live in a different country. Calling outside your country may cost money depending on your phone plan. In that case, you'll want to find a local number. Opening this link will help you do that. It seems like there's a ton of information in this one meeting invite, doesn't it? But we don't have to care about all of it.

So just to recap, we'll use our link for joining by computer or smartphone, our one tap mobile if we want easier dialing from an iPhone. And finally we'll grab our meeting ID and a phone number from this list of numbers under dial by location to join from our phone with a physical key pad.

And that's it. That's all we need to know to join our meeting. But what happens once we're in? For the answer to that question, check out the zoom workshop for the join method you're using to learn all you need to know about participating in a meeting. See you next time.