Zoom: Schedule meetings in the Zoom app

This article explains how to set up a Zoom meeting from using the Zoom web portal or Zoom desktop and mobile apps.

For academic courses, see Schedule Course Meetings with the Moodle Zoom Activity
If you use Outlook or Office365, see Schedule Zoom Meetings with the Outlook/Webmail Add-In

Prefer video? Watch Zoom’s How to Schedule a Meeting tutorial.

Schedule a meeting

Log into Zoom by going to brynmawr-edu.zoom.us or opening your Zoom desktop or mobile app and choosing Sign in with SSO.
Click Schedule a Meeting (web portal, pictured below left) or Schedule (desktop and mobile app, pictured below right).
Give the meeting a Topic (name) and, optionally, a short Description.
Use When to set the meeting date and start time. (For a recurring series, use the date of the first meeting.) If you want to create a meeting link without a specified date and time, skip to step 7.
Use Duration to set how long the meeting will last. Note that the meeting link will still work outside of this time window.
Zoom will default to your computer’s Time Zone; click the drop-down menu if you need to change this. Meeting invitees/participants will see dates and times adjusted to their own time zones.
Check Recurring meeting box to set up a series of meetings with the same meeting link/ID.
- Use the Duration settings to control how often the meeting recurs — see Zoom’s article on R ecurring meetings for more details.
- Choose Duration > No fixed time to create a meeting link that is not associated with a date/time.
Click Save to finish scheduling your meeting.

Change meeting options

For the remaining meeting options, you can keep the default settings unless you have a specific reason to override them. (To change your defaults for all new meetings, log into the Zoom web portal and click Settings.)

Here's how to change additional meeting options

Meeting ID: For security reasons, LITS recommends that you usually use the default setting, Generate Automatically, which creates a new, random unique meeting ID for each meeting or meeting series. Your Personal Meeting ID remains the same across meetings: people who have it can drop in any time, and the more widely you share it, the more vulnerable it becomes to hacking/Zoom-bombing.
Registration required: Turn this on for added security if you will be advertising this meeting publicly. Zoom creates a registration link for you to publicize; participant click the link and must sign up with an email address to receive the meeting link. (See Zoom: Use registration to secure meetings.)
Use at least one of the following security measures to help prevent Zoom-bombing:
- Passcode: Least disruptive; participants who don’t have the meeting link (which has the passcode embedded) will need to enter this meeting passcode in order to join.
- Waiting Room: Hosts and co-hosts are alerted when people join the meeting and must admit them before they can participate. By default, everyone except alternative hosts will join “in the waiting room.” You can exempt people who are logged into a BMC Zoom or any Zoom account attached to email domains you specify (e.g., haverford.edu) by logging into Zoom web portal, opening Settings and editing your waiting room options.
- Only authenticated users can join: Most restrictive; participants will need to sign into either any Zoom account, a BMC, Haverford or Swarthmore Zoom account, or a BMC Zoom account before they can join the meeting.
Video: Specify whether the host (you or any alternative hosts) or participants start the meeting with video on or off. (Participants will still be able to turn video on unless you have disallowed this.)
Audio: Allow users to call in using Telephone, use Computer Audio only, or Both.
Calendar (desktop and mobile apps only): Save to Outlook or another calendar.
Meeting Options:
- Allow participants to join anytime: Check to enable participants to join before you (or an alternative host).
- Mute participants on entry: Check to mute participants when they join. (They will still be able to unmute themselves; for more info on muting participants during a meeting, see Managing Participants in a Meeting.)
- Breakout room pre-assign (web portal only): Check to create the breakout rooms you will use in the meeting and, optionally, pre-assign participants to them. See Zoom: Create and Use Breakout Rooms for details and limitations.
- Automatically record meeting: Check to automatically begin recording the meeting as soon as a host or alternative host starts/joins. (See local recording and cloud recording for details; cloud recordings will also be automatically uploaded to Panopto). Note: Be sure to inform participants in advance that you will be recording and/or pause the recording at the start of the meeting to inform them, so that they can opt out or adjust participation as needed.
- Approve or block entry to users from specific regions/countries (web portal only): New for 2021, use with caution.
Alternative hosts: Enter the email address(es) of BMC Zoom user(s) to empower them to start the meeting for you (note: they must have an account on BMC’s Zoom license). New for 2021 — if you join the meeting after the alternative host, you will become the host and they will be downgraded to a co-host (or participant if the co-host role was disabled).
Interpretation: Check to enable language interpretation channels for the meeting, then provide email addresses of the interpreters and language provided. See language interpretation for more information.

View/manage a scheduled meeting

All of your Zoom meetings (including any scheduled through the Outlook/Webmail Add-in and a Zoom activity in Moodle) will show up on your Zoom Meetings page.

To open the Meetings page:

Log into Zoom by going to brynmawr-edu.zoom.us or opening your Zoom desktop or mobile app and choosing Sign in with SSO.
Click Meetings in the left sidebar (web portal) or top menu bar (apps).

Click on any Meeting to view information about it; if you created the meeting, you will see buttons to:

Start the meeting.
Edit the time, date, recurrence or other meeting settings.
Delete the meeting (if a series, Zoom will clarify whether you wish to delete this occurrence or all).

Note: In the web portal, scroll beneath the summary of meeting details to see these options.

There are three meeting management options that you can only access by logging into the Zoom web portal:

Save as template: Use this meeting’s settings to setup subsequent meetings.
Poll: Create questions for in-meeting polls
Live streaming: Configure a connection to a live streaming platform. Typically used to enable people who are not logged in to view and listen to the meeting but not participate; may be needed for certain captioning services.

Invite people to a scheduled meeting

To invite people to your meeting, send them the information they will need to join:

Log into Zoom by going to brynmawr-edu.zoom.us or opening your Zoom desktop or mobile app and choosing Sign in with SSO.
Click Meetings in the left sidebar (web portal) or top menu bar (apps).
Click on the meeting to which you want to invite people.
Click Copy invitation (next to the meeting invite link in the web portal) to copy the meeting link and information participants need to phone in (if application) to your clipboard.
Paste the invitation into an email and send it to the people you wish to invite to the meeting.

Notes:

You can paste the meeting link and information about how to join your meeting anywhere. However, keep in mind that anyone who has the link can join the meeting.
Although you can paste the invitation onto a Moodle page to share it with students, we recommend you Schedule Course Meetings with the Moodle Zoom Activity instead.
If you are scheduling a meeting that is open to the public, we recommend turning registration on and sharing the registration link, rather than posting the meeting link to a website. Meeting links posted on websites are very vulnerable to Zoom-bombing because they can be harvested by bots that crawl the web looking for them. Registration prevents this and helps with security even if you set it up so that people are automatically approved and receive the meeting links immediately.
When sharing a meeting invitation with a mailing list or posting to a message board or other limited-access site, consider your audience. If it is small and you trust recipients not to share the link, it’s probably okay to send out the meeting link and invitation details. If it’s large or people may share widely, it is safer to turn registration on and share the registration link instead.

Questions?

If you have any additional questions or problems, don't hesitate to reach out to the Help Desk!

Phone: 610-526-7440 | Library and Help Desk hours
Email: help@brynmawr.edu | Service catalog
Location: Canaday Library 1st floor