My previous Zoom videos have received over 1 1/2 million views and thousands and thousands of comments.
So in today's video, I wanted to answer five of the most frequently asked questions I've received over the last few months. We're gonna talk about everything about managing participants to broadcasting, to our breakout rooms, and even some tips and tricks that you probably hadn't heard of before all in today's video.
Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.
And yes, you may be seeing a few different versions of me today because I wanted to show a few real world examples. And so I have myself on a separate computer on my iPad here next to me as I go through some of your most frequently asked questions.
Private Zoom Chat Messages
And we're gonna kick things off with the comment section.
One of the most frequently asked questions I get is: Scott, are private messages within the chat window actually private?
Now, I get the feeling that many of the people who are asking this have been students perhaps, and people who are maybe on other people's calls, and can the host really see what we're saying? When we say private in here, does it actually mean private?
Well, the good news is yes. The host cannot see private messages either during the meeting or even post the meeting. They truly are private. But let's take a look at some of the other options that we have down here.
So by default, when you open up the chat window, it is going to list everyone. And that's usually the most common way that we use messages here within Zoom chat. If I'm the host, I'm sending a message out to everyone. And if I'm a participant, maybe I want to ask a question and I want other people to know what I'm asking or if other people agree and that type of thing.
But I can always use this dropdown and select a specific participant. So if I want to say something directly to Jack, I can just say, "Hi, Jack." And yeah, this time I'm going to spell his name correctly. And we can have a conversation. We can have a discussion back and forth if necessary.
However, there's an easier way to do this, especially if you have a large number of participants. And that is, let's say that we're back on this everyone's setting and I want to say something to Jack. I don't want to go through this dropdown menu. And if there's 30 or 40 people in here, what I can do is I can actually just click on this link, Jack's iPad, and it's gonna automatically select that down below. So now I can continue my conversation or select someone else to do so as well.
Renaming Zoom Participants
So that moves us on to tip number two.
And this has to do with managing participants in particular. And if you are the host, you may find it a little frustrating when people have cryptic names as their usernames. So here I've got Jack's iPad. Well, what if there's more than one Jack? Or I know more than one Jack, or what if it's even worse? What if it's something like iPhone 23, something along those lines?
Well, what you can do is you can rename anyone here within your participant list if you are the host. So if I click on More, I can come down here and select Rename.
Now, you may be asking yourself: What if it's a long list, Scott, and here this person doesn't have a profile pic? What if I'm not sure which Jack this is or which individual it is? Well, what you can do is come up here and here you can see Jack's iPad. I can click on this little blue button and I can say Rename as well.
I often use this more frequently because I'm actually looking at the person. If their webcam is on, I'm like, "Oh yeah, I know which Jack this is. This is Jack Smith." Okay, we're gonna say OK. Perfect, now it's renamed.
Now, it's easier for me to see both in the chat window down below if I need to make him a presenter, whatever I need to do, if I'm interacting with this individual. So as the host, if you find it confusing or if you're not sure of someone's username, once you do find out, you can always go in and rename it yourself.
View Zoom Participants in Different Ways
Sticking with participants and how we interact in view participants, let's take a look at how we can view those participants in a few different ways.
So I'm gonna go here and actually share my screen because often that's what we're doing here within Zoom. And by default, typically you'll have just this small webcam window that will come up either in the top right corner, maybe the lower right-hand corner. And it will typically show the active speaker, showing me at this point in time.
But we do have a few additional options. We can choose this thumbnail view here, which is gonna give us a bit of a vertical list. Now I only have one other person in this meeting example. So I'm only gonna see the two of us. It usually maxes out at about four videos at a time. And then you can scroll through if you want to take a look at more. And don't forget that you can drag this wherever you like. If it's more comfortable or if you need to get it out of the way as you're presenting.
Now, if you don't like the vertical view, what you can do is you can drag this down to the bottom and it's going to adjust and give us more of a linear, more of a horizontal view here. Again, we can click and drag and move that around. If we wanna go back to vertical, you just sorta have to smash it. You have to push it to the right-hand side. So that's dragged to the right if you want the vertical, drag to the bottom if you want the horizontal. And you can put it in a variety of different ways. But of course, you can also minimize this altogether and hide the thumbnail view.
Here it's gonna show me who is talking. I'm actively talking, so it's gonna let me know. And if I'm listening to other individuals as well, but I usually prefer one of these other two options. The other thing that I like to point out with when you're using this single view is that you can only drag this anywhere on your screen.
If you have a webcam dead center on your screen, you can even drag it up into or high parts of it so that you're looking almost directly at the webcam. Now, in my case, my webcam is slightly off to the right. So if I drag this over here, it looks almost as if I'm looking at you straight in the face. I'm actually looking at my thumbnail on my screen at the moment. But this can be a great tip if you want to be more engaging with your audience, be more engaging with your participants.
Broadcast to All Break Out Rooms
All right, next on our list has to do with something called breakout rooms. And I have an entire video showing you everything you need to know about breakout rooms. I'll leave a link for it in the description, and also here in the top right-hand corner as well.
But a common question that I receive when it comes to breakout rooms is, "Scott, can I present to all of the breakout rooms?" If I create, let’s say, three breakout rooms as the host, can I present my slides? Can I talk to everybody?
Well, I've got some bad news for you. As of the recording of this video, you cannot broadcast or share slides, or actually address everyone using audio in all of those breakout rooms.
However, now that I've initiated my breakout rooms, what you can do is send them all a message. Down here on the lower left, there is something that says "Broadcast a message to all." If I select that, it's just gonna be a simple text field, and I can say, "Hello, we will be wrapping things up in five minutes." Maybe just give them a warning or something like that.
And I can broadcast that out. Now, all of my rooms, all of my participants are going to receive that message. That's the best that Zoom can do at this point in time. Perhaps in the future, they'll give us the ability to actually broadcast things to everyone individually. But this "Broadcast message to all" can be a great way to make sure that those rooms are on pace. Maybe you can remind them to move on to discussion question number three, something along those lines. Or maybe you can share a question that one of the rooms that you jumped into and joined for a moment and you thought was relevant, you can share with others as well.
So don't forget about this "Broadcast message to all" feature.
How to reuse Zoom Polls
The last and final tip I want to share with you today is a common question I receive about polls. If you'd like to learn more about polls, I'll leave a link to my screen share tips because polls are a great way to make your Zoom meetings that much more interactive.
For our poll settings, what we need to do is actually jump into our Zoom account on our desktop browser. In order to do that, you need to go to Zoom.us.
Now, when you're within your Zoom account, you want to come down to Meetings, and you're probably already familiar with this area. This might be where you schedule new meetings or see the previous meetings that you've had as well.
But if you want to be able to repurpose a poll, you don't want to attach that poll to a specific meeting. Otherwise, that's the only place where that poll is going to exist. That's the only place where you're going to be able to access that poll. So instead, I encourage you to go to your personal meeting room. If you are using your personal meeting room, that's the same link, right? That's the same meeting ID time and time again.
All you need to do is scroll down to the bottom here to the poll section. And here you can see I've already created two polls and I can say Add, and I can start to add a brand new poll. The great thing here is that when I add this poll, when I create these polls, I can repurpose them and reuse them time and time again. So I don't have to create them from scratch every time. I can use them as long as I'm using my personal meeting room, not a unique meeting with its own ID, something that I've created from scratch.
So if you want to repurpose those polls, make sure to use your personal meeting ID.
Well, I hope you enjoyed today's tips. And I'd love to hear further Zoom questions that you may have. Be sure to ask them and let me know in the comments. I may just make a new video and give you the answer in an upcoming video.
Thank you so much for watching today's video. And don't forget to subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel. Remember being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.