Transcription
Hi everyone, Betsy here. Today I want to show you my favorite top 20 tips and tricks in the Zoom workplace app. You might know some of these, but I am sure they're going to be a lot of new ones that you're going to love. If you want to jump around this video, feel free to use the timestamps down below in the description. Otherwise, let's jump in and see what these are.
Tip number one, you can use your own custom virtual background, and you can create that in Canva. Let's go take a look.
So, it all starts here over in Canva. And you're going to open up your Canva account and then search the design templates for a Zoom background. Canva has all of these templates all ready to go for you. So, you see in this one, you can even personalize it. I'm going to put my name in the upper right corner just using simple text. And the fonts are all chosen within Canva. And then underneath there, I can even customize it with my either company name or products and services that I provide. And the blue background and the plants, those are all provided by Canva. You'll see many templates available to you.
Then the way we get it out of Canva and over to Zoom is with the share button in the top right corner. You have to download and then keep it on PNG and then click download. And that design will be a file located in your downloads folder. So now let's go on over to Zoom, and I'll show you how to get it in there.
So here we are in Zoom. You need to bring up your video settings. So let's go down there on the little arrow next to the video button and then choose video settings. And so in this box across from left to right, make sure you're on the video and effects option on the left sidebar, click on virtual backgrounds, and then click on that little blue plus sign. When you do that, choose add image. And you're going to navigate to where the image is in your downloads folder. And that's it. It loads here inside your Zoom meeting as your virtual background.
Tips number two, three, and four all have to do with your video settings. So, let's take a look back in there.
Tip number two, portrait lighting. From your video settings, go to the camera tab and then scroll down until you see this portrait lighting. There's a switch there on the right. And when you click it on and it turns blue, it darkens your background ever so slightly and it brings illumination to your face. A great tip, especially when maybe your actual lighting in your room isn't so great. This can be a way to use the software to help you be illuminated.
Tip number three, touch up my appearance. On the same tab, a little bit further down is the option touch up my appearance. Now, this is quite magical in that when it's on, it gives you somewhat of a glow and maybe, let's say, reduces some of those wrinkles. And underneath there, there is a slider. So, you can slide it all the way down to be a little less touched up or all the way to high. I wouldn't recommend this, but you can see it gives you very much somewhat of a glow. Have fun with that one.
Tip number four, video filters. Inside the same video settings box, click on the video filters tab. And underneath there are all of these different types of ways to put a frame around your video filter. Have a lot of fun in here. You can even make it look like you are wearing sunglasses or a hat or even a disguise. These can be a lot of fun, definitely inside break time inside your Zoom meetings, and even make it look like you have a little flower in your hair. Now, the thing inside video filters to make sure that you know is that you set it back to none because these will be remembered each time you come into Zoom. And if you want to know more about creating a video filter for your own Zoom meetings, check out our video here.
Tips five, six, and seven all have to do with your transcript that is running inside your meeting. So, let's go take a look at those.
Tip number five, view the transcript for your meeting. Right here in your Zoom toolbar, you'll see a button that says show captions. Go ahead and click on the little up arrow right next to there. And in the little menu that appears, go ahead and click on view full transcript. That will bring the transcript over there on your right sidebar on your screen. And you can view the transcript while the meeting is in progress, or you can just click off of there with the X in the top right corner. And while the meeting is going on, the transcript is being created, and you can then save it prior to the meeting ending. Now this is great when you are attending someone else's meeting. So before the meeting ends, go to that up arrow there, go back to view full transcript, and you can see the transcript has been continuing while the meeting was going on. And then right there down at the bottom, click on save transcript. The transcript is saved to your local computer where you can find it and print it later.
Tip number six, show captions. In the toolbar at the bottom of your screen, click on the button that says show captions. This will turn on an area below the speaker so that you can actually see what they're saying. The captions will run all throughout the meeting and will not disturb others who are there with you. You turn them on to help you attend the meeting if for some reason you cannot hear. You can also turn these on if you want to mute the meeting so that you can be watching and reading while the meeting's going on.
Tip number seven, AI companion. In your Zoom toolbar, click the little diamond button where it says AI companion. And this right sidebar opens up for the AI companion questions. You can ask questions such as, "Catch me up," "Was my name mentioned," "Are there any action items," or "What topics have been discussed?" And when you click one of those buttons, the AI companion, using artificial intelligence, will use the transcript that is running to see if any of those have occurred. And after you have asked the question, the answer shows up there in that sidebar, helping you to see what content has been covered during the meeting.
Tip number eight, one of my all-time favorites, is to press and hold the space bar to automatically unmute yourself. Watch. You press and hold the space bar on your keyboard, and while you're holding it down, you are unmuted so that you can talk into the meeting. And then once you release your finger, you're muted again.
Tip number nine. This one has to do with more shortcut keys, but we have to go take a look inside the settings that are in your Zoom Workplace app. Let's go take a look.
So, here inside your Zoom Workplace app settings, you can see there on the left side, we are on keyboard shortcuts. And then on the right hand side, some of my favorites are like starting and stopping your video. So, yeah, if you wanted to turn off your video without having to move your mouse button, you can do this with the keyboard. Now, today I am using a Mac computer for this recording, and that's why you're seeing the Mac keyboard shortcuts, which are the up arrow is the shift key. The button in the middle that I would say looks like a butterfly is the command key, which is proprietary to a Mac computer, and then the letter V. So, when you hold that key combination down, Shift Command V, it will start and stop your video like this. Watch. Shift Command V. Shift Command V.
Tip number 10. Share portion of screen. Yep, that's right. When you use the share button and it brings up the share window, you have an option in here under advanced, which is share portion of screen. What that allows you to do is you can share only a part of the website like this. Like in this instance, when you're sharing a website, sometimes the area that's shared into the Zoom meeting is so wide that it's hard for people to focus on the content. And in this case, as you can see, the parts of the website that are being shared into the meeting are only a portion. And that can be changed even like that. You can make it so that only a portion of the screen is shown. And then if you want to, you can go back to a regular share and show the entire width of the website. So portion of screen lets you show just that part when you want to.
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Tips number 11 and 12 kind of go together, and they have to do with annotating on your screen, which is like drawing.
Tip number 11 is drawing arrows to point what you are sharing. One of my all-time favorite things to do, and people ask me about it frequently, is to be able to draw an arrow on the screen in different colors, and that's done with the annotate toolbar. You can draw and point while you're describing or demonstrating, and this is how it works. When you are sharing your screen, in the floating controls bar that appears on your screen, go ahead and click on the annotate button. That brings up the annotate toolbar. And in the draw button at the top, make sure you click there first and choose the arrow because when you get in here, it looks like a little pencil. And so it looks like you can draw, but that's freehand drawing. So you're going to want to use the arrow. And then after the arrow, a few buttons down, notice there's a colored dot. Click there and then choose the color of the arrow. Then all you do is click and drag on your screen, and your arrows appear.
Tip number 12. When you want your cursor to show up on the screen, that's your moving arrow pointer, especially during a demonstration. Well, you can use what's called the spotlight. And in the annotate toolbar, a few buttons down from where you were drawing your arrows, you see there's a button that says spotlight. Go ahead and click there. And your choices are either the round spotlight, which is going to be a little red dot like this, so that people can see where your cursor is on the screen and where you're about to click. Or you can click on the arrow for the spotlight. And now you have an arrow on the screen. So it's supposed to bring attention to where your arrow pointer is so that when you go ahead and click, your viewers, the people who are participating, know where your pointer is.
Tip number 13, save your chat. As you can see here, when the chat is shown inside a Zoom meeting, sometimes there's information in there that could be a testimonial from someone. It could be someone giving you a tip. It could be someone's information or contact information. And once that meeting ends, the chat is gone. Unless the host who is hosting the meeting has set it up so that maybe the chat goes into a team chat or a group meeting chat, but that's not under your control. What you can do is you can save the chat, and that's located in the upper right corner where you see the three dots. And then come down in that menu, and the first option says save chat. And when you click there, you get a little message at the bottom that says the chat was saved, and it does say show in finder. If you're using a Mac, you can go there and see where it's located. If you're on a Windows computer, it'll say show in folder, and then you just click there. I'll tell you though, your chat is located inside your documents folder. There's a Zoom folder, and inside there, there's another folder for the meeting you're in.
Tip number 14. Set up your meeting with a waiting room. That's right. All of your participants as they're coming to your Zoom meeting get to wait for you in another meeting room outside where you're actually holding your presentation or your class. And in the waiting room, they can see a video. They can see a message from you. And you can even message them if you need to. This is how you set it up.
You need to start here in your Zoom web portal and go to settings on the left hand side there. And then on the right, locate the security section of settings where you see waiting room. Make sure your waiting room is on. Any of these switches, they have to be blue in order for it to be on. And then right underneath there where it says waiting room options, go ahead and click on customize waiting room. This opens up the area where you get to choose on the left whether your waiting room has an image, has a logo of you with a description, or my favorite, a video. And if you want to know more about how to set up your waiting room and match it to the brand of your company, check out our video here.
Tips number 15, 16, and 17 all have to do with how your participants react in a meeting or how you can react when you're in someone else's meeting. Let me show you.
Tip number 15, show the raised hand in the toolbar separate from others. So, when your participants are in your Zoom meeting with you and they need to ask you a question, Zoom has a great way to what I call raise your digital hand. So, it's this little emoji that comes up on their screen like they're raising their hand, but it actually moves them in the gallery up to the top left corner so that you can see they have a question. It's a great way to know while you're demonstrating that someone needs you without unmuting. And then you can address their question in the order that the raised hands appeared. Now, to make it easy for them to find this, you can actually separate out the raised hand from the other buttons on the toolbar like this. So, you're going to make sure that this button is on. And then when you're in a meeting, the raised hand button right there is all by itself.
Tips number 16 and 17 are right next to each other back here in the meeting settings in your Zoom web portal. Notice that there is one that's called gesture recognition. So when you want to allow people to raise their hand, you can put the raise hand button right on the toolbar. However, you can also use your physical hand to raise your hand. And that's what gesture recognition is. And when you use this feature, all you have to do is just raise your hand at this 90°. Don't like do this, or don't do this, but have a little space in between your head, and the raise hand button actually goes on without you touching a button. And then right above there is reactions. Tip number 17. Reactions are emojis that your participants can use to engage with you. They range from all the regular emojis that we see when we're texting, like the wow and the celebration and the heart for love. And these are ways that they can give you applause in a sense in a meeting while everyone's muted.
Tip number 18, assign a co-host. When you are running a Zoom meeting and you need an extra set of hands, Zoom lets you assign the co-host functionality to another person who's already present in the meeting. But in order to have this capability, you have to first turn on the setting in your Zoom web portal like this.
From here, make sure you go into your account settings and make sure this setting right here for co-host to allow the host to add co-hosts. The co-host have the same in meeting controls as the host. Well, with a few that are missing, like a co-host can't, they can't end the meeting and they can't assign other co-hosts, but they get a lot of capability. And this really helps you when you want to do the presenting and you can have somebody behind the scenes doing the controls and making sure everybody is muted and inside from the waiting room. So then when you're inside the meeting, something like this, you can go to the person's name in the participants box, hover over their name, click on more, and then right there it says make co-host. If you want that capability, you must turn on that setting first. Then you are confirmed, and the person will have co-host capability.
Tip number 19, breakout rooms. This is what sets Zoom apart from the rest, to be able to create breakout rooms. They're actually additional rooms outside of here. This being your main meeting room that you're meeting in. You can actually create multiple breakout rooms where you send your participants. They can have co-working exercises, case studies. They don't hear you, you don't hear them. You can have separate speakers in those rooms. And then you have the control to end all those breakouts and bring them back in here. But first, you must set it up in your settings like this.
Starting here in your Zoom web portal in your account settings, go all the way down to the advanced settings where you see breakout room and all of these different check marks. They're going to help you tweak the settings you want. For instance, you can assign participants to breakouts when scheduling. You can also broadcast your message either typing a banner message or using your voice. You can also create, rename, and delete breakout rooms when the rooms are already in progress. And you can also allow the host to view the activity when they're in the rooms. Like you could see if people were unmuted or muted. You can see if they're talking just by looking at the status icons. And you can also see who is sharing their screen. And that's going to give you this button right here for breakout rooms. And when you click there, it lets you create rooms. And you can create up to 50 rooms if you wanted to under a pro account. If you had 100 people in your meeting, well, including yourself, you could actually break people out into multiple rooms and put two people in each room for like a pair and share activity. You'll also be able to assign them automatically, which is mathematically. Once you tell Zoom how many rooms you want, it will automatically just divide everybody up into those rooms by how many that are there. So, if you want two in a room, you got to up that number. And then down here at the bottom, it tells you how many participants per room. You can also see that once you have assigned a co-host in your meeting, you can say whether to include or not include the co-host to those breakouts. And then when you're ready, you just click create.
Tip number 20, use the built-in voice recorder with AI. This comes included in your Zoom account, but you have to make sure it's turned on in the Zoom settings like this.
Start here in the Zoom web portal and go down to your account settings and then go to where it says AI companion. Let's see. Right there. Go to where it says AI companion across the top from left to right. And then scroll down to where it says recording. And then scroll down right here to where it says voice recorder with AI companion. And make sure that's turned on. You can also, while you're there, make sure that you've got the smart recordings with AI companion turned on. That will allow you to record your meetings when you're recording to the cloud and you'll get automatic highlights and chapters.
Your voice recorder ends up in the mobile app like this. So, the voice recorder starts recording when you tap that button in the upper right corner. It will show you that the recording has begun. And then at the bottom, when you're done recording, you tap the check mark. It then confirms even further if you want to end the recording. Your voice recordings end up where your cloud recordings from your meetings are kept under recordings and transcripts. And as you can see here, I have some in that are processing. I have others that I've recorded. And then the ones that are blue with the triangle specifically come from your voice recorder.
If you want to get a summary, well, you could click on it and you could just play it. Or if you wanted the summary and bullet points that AI has assessed and analyzed for you, then you're going to go to Zoom Docs over on the left hand side. This is also a part of your Zoom web portal. When you come in here under Zoom Docs, you can first of all look at all of your meetings, and there is the voice recording. If you click on the details, you can then go to where it says generate with transcript. And what Zoom will do is it'll generate bullet points, next steps, and summaries for you automatically.
And that's your quick guide to my top 20 Zoom tips and tricks. Which one was your favorite? Or was there one that you didn't know yet? Please let me know in the comments. And if you found this helpful, give it a like and subscribe for more Zoom tech tutorials just like this one. Thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you in the next one. [Music]