Zoom: Create meetings

There are a number of ways to schedule Zoom meetings. While you can create meetings through the Zoom activity in Moodle and the Zoom add-in for Outlook/Microsoft365, you can also schedule them directly in the Zoom app or on Zoom's website.

Before you begin, you may need:

A Bryn Mawr Zoom account

Schedule a meeting

Log into your BMC Zoom account through the Zoom web portal, the Zoom desktop app, or the Zoom mobile app.
Click Schedule.
Give the meeting a Topic. In the web portal, you can also select +Add Description.
Use When to set the meeting date and start time. Check Recurring meeting to set up a series of meetings that use the same link, ID, and passcode (if enabled). If you select this option, determine how often the meeting will repeat:
- Recurrence: This can be set to Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or No Fixed Time (if it repeats without a set pattern).
- Repeat every: determines how often the meeting reoccurs
- End Date: if you know the last date this series of meetings will be held.
List the people you want to be invited to the meeting in Attendees. You can search for users by their Bryn Mawr email.
Click Save to finish scheduling your meeting.

Customize meeting

Zoom provides further options for customizing your meeting. For these settings, we recommend using the default we've provided for all Bryn Mawr accounts, particularly those dealing with security. Nevertheless, you can change them if you have a compelling reason to do so.

Meeting ID: For security reasons, LITS recommends that you use the default setting, Generate Automatically, which creates a new, random unique meeting ID for each meeting or recurring series of meetings. In contrast, your Personal Meeting ID remains the same across meetings. People who have it can enter your meeting any time and share it with others. That's why this option makes your meeting more vulnerable to interruptions for unwanted guests, i.e. 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.)
Security: Zoom has further measures to ensure that your unwanted guests don't enter your meeting.
- Passcode: requires participants who don’t have the meeting link to enter a passcode 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 the host alternative hosts will go to the Waiting Room when they log into a meeting. You can exempt users with a BMC Zoom account or Zoom account associated with a trusted domain (e.g., haverford.edu) by opening Settings and editing your waiting room options.
- Only authenticated users can join: 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.

Warning: As a default, passcode and waiting room are enabled for all meetings. Do not change this! Otherwise, your meeting's security may be at risk.

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. This option will only be seen in the Zoom app.
Options (online version) or Advanced Options (in-app version):
- 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; see Managing Participants in a Meeting for more information).
- Breakout room pre-assign: Check to create the breakout rooms you will use in the meeting and, optionally, pre-assign participants to them. This is only available in the online version. Zoom: Create and Use Breakout Rooms has more details.
- Automatically record meeting: Check to automatically start recording a meeting when it begins. Zoom: Where are my recordings? covers where this recording will be saved.

Attention: Be sure to inform participants in advance that you will be recording, so that they can opt out or adjust participation as needed.

Approve or block entry to users from specific regions/countries
Alternative hosts: Enter the email address(es) of BMC Zoom user(s) you want to give this role. Alternative hosts can start and run the meeting before the host joins.
Interpretation: Check to enable language interpretation channels for the meeting. Using Language Interpretation in your meeting or webinar gives more information

View and manage meetings

Once you schedule a Zoom meeting, it will display on the Meetings page within your Zoom account. This includes meetings created through the Zoom activity in Moodle and the Zoom add-in for Microsoft Outlook.

To open your Meetings page, do the following

Log in to your Zoom account.
Click Meetings in the left sidebar (on the Zoom website) or top menu bar (within the app).

From there, click on any meeting to view its information. If you created the meeting, you will have the following options:

Start the meeting.
Edit the meeting details and setting
Delete the meeting. If this meeting is a series, you will have to clarify whether you wish to delete this one occurrence or all of them.

If you are on Zoom's website, you will see three additional options for meeting management:

Personal Meeting Room: Zoom creates a personal meeting room that you can use for instant meetings. This page will let you control this room's settings
Meeting Templates: You can save the settings for a meeting to use them as a templates for future ones. If you've created any templates, you'll find them here
Polls/Quizzes: this will take you to the Surveys page, where you can create questionnaires to be used in future meetings.

Invite people to a scheduled meeting

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

Log in to your Zoom account.
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 to copy the meeting link and information participants would need to dial in on a telephone.
Paste the invitation into an email and send it to the people you wish to invite.

Caution: Be careful with where you copy and paste meeting information. Anyone who has the link can join the meeting, so make sure you can trust who you're sending it to. In general, you should share the link to in settings with a small audience and where access is restricted. If you need to share in a large, unrestricted setting, use registration to secure the meeting.

Videos & reading on Zoom scheduling

Zoom: How to Schedule a Meeting
Zoom: Scheduling a recurring meeting

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