Host a meeting

Start your meeting either by clicking the Start button next to your meeting's topic at diak-fi.zoom.us/meeting, by opening the invite link, or by clicking the Start meeting button on Diakle. When you join a meeting while logged in to the account that created the meeting, you will automatically join it as the host.

In the meeting, as a host you are able to assign roles (e.g. co-host or host) to the other participants and to manage participants' permissions. Each meeting can have only one host, but you can add several co-hosts. Co-hosts have almost the same rights as hosts, except for starting and ending the meeting and assigning new co-hosts (more details in Zoom's own guide).

The host can end the meeting for all participants by pressing the red "End" button (1) in the bottom right corner of the screen. Hosts and co-hosts have access to features that are not available to participants, like Polls and Breakout Rooms.

The most commonly used features by hosts and co-hosts during a Zoom meeting are:

(2) View: The view menu in the top right corner of the screen allows you to change the cameras display on your screen. The gallery view shows several (up to 49) participants cameras in the same size next to each other. Speaker view will show the speaker, with spotlighted or pinned cameras in the center. Immersive view shows the participants side-by-side in a shared virtual background. (video tutorial here)

Good to know!

  • In gallery view, you can reorder the cameras and, for example, keep the teachers always on top of the screen for everyone.
  • Use the Spotlight feature to keep certain cameras always visible for all the participants, e.g. when there are presenters and sign language interpreters in a meeting. Hover the mouse over the desired camera, click "..." and select "Spotlight for everyone". To spotlight another camera, move the cursor over the second camera, click "..." and select "Add spotlight". You can spotlight up to 9 cameras as a host.
  • The participants can also highlight cameras only for themselves using the "Pin" function. To allow a participant to pin more than one camera, open the Participants menu in the meeting. With the mouse over the participant's name, select "More" and then "Allow to Multi-pin".

(3) Security: In the security menu, you can quickly edit the rights for all participants at once, e.g. remove rights to turn microphone on and/or screen share, and even suspend all participant interactions temporarily. In large sessions, these commands might save time, and help with keeping the meeting organized. By selecting "Lock meeting", you can disable the entry of new participants into the meeting.

(4) Participants: Click Participants to open the participants tab, where you can assign co-host rights (1) for people who should help you with coordinating the sessions, and (2) rename participants by moving the mouse over their names and clicking "More>". In the participants tab, you can also see which participants have cameras and microphones on, and (3) mute individual participants if needed. (video tutorial here)

(5) Polls: Create and/or launch previously created polls during your meeting. When you launch a poll, the questions will be shown to the participants in a pop-up window. Once you end the poll, you can share the results with the participants, who will see them in the same pop-up window. (video tutorial here)

Good to know!

The poll results are displayed as graphics during the meeting. Take screenshots of the graphics, as after the meeting the poll results are only available as a spreadsheet with the list of responses.

(6) Chat: By opening the chat tab, you can send messages to everyone in the meeting, or to individual participants. Select the recipient of the message by clicking the box next to "To:". Private messages are not visible in the meeting's recording. You can also upload files to the chat by clicking the document icon. The other participants in the meeting will be able to download files uploaded to the chat.

(7) Share screen: Screen share is by default also available to participants. To be able to see the meeting's chat while sharing your screen in full-screen, open the meeting menu by hovering the mouse over the green "You are screen sharing" sign, and click the chat button. The chat will open as a pop-up window and will remain visible to you.

Good to know!

  • Select Share Screen > Basic > Whiteboard to open a shared white canvas, where hosts and participants can write, draw and interact during the meeting. Use the Whiteboard and the Annotate features to engage the participants and promote interaction. Watch the video tutorial (3:50 min) here.
  • Select Share Screen > Advanced > PowerPoint as Virtual Background to use your presentation slides as a background to your video. You can also adjust your video size and position in the screen.

(8) Record: You can choose to record automatically when scheduling the meeting, or you can start recording at any point during the meeting by using the Record function. Only the host and the co-hosts can start a recording on Zoom. To give permission to a participant to record to their own computers, go to Participants, find the participant's name, click "More >" and "Allow to record local files".

  • Record to the cloud: If you need to share the recording with others, this option is more useful. The file will be stored on the Zoom cloud service, and can be retrieved at diak-fi.zoom.us/recording. Find the share link by pressing the "Share ..." button next to the recording in question, and click "Show" next to "Sharing Information". You can enable Passcode protection if your recording is private, and provide the code only to selected viewers. When you click the meeting topic, you will see that the recording generated an audio file, a chat file and a video file. You can remove the chat from your recording links by deleting the chat file. You can also share an audio-only link, if you want to use your recording as a podcast for example. "Record to the cloud" captures the speaker view, the shared screen and the chat. (video tutorial here)
  • Record on this computer: Select this option to save the recording as a .mp4 video file. This option is recommended if you need to edit the recording. The chat and other activities are saved in separate files. By default, the files will be stored in the folder Zoom in your Documents. If you want to save your recordings to another folder, open the Zoom app, go to Settings (cogwheel icon in the top right corner), select the Recording tab, and press the "Change" button to choose a new destination folder. "Record on this computer" captures the screen as viewed by the host, including gallery view and PowerPoint as a camera background.

(9) Breakout rooms: Split the participants into small groups during your meeting. You can assign participants manually or automatically. You can also let the participants choose their own small group. As a host, you will be able to enter and exit the small groups during the activity. Breakout room activities are not included in recordings, only the main room's. (video tutorial here)

Good to know!

You can also create breakout rooms and pre-assign individual participants to predetermined rooms before the meeting starts. This can be done at the Zoom web portal by editing an individual meeting, and selecting "Breakout Rooms pre-assign". You can also import a list of participants and room designations as a CSV file.

However, this has several limitations. For example, you can only start the breakout rooms after joining the meeting as a host, and you can only add users by their email address, and only users who already have a Zoom account. Zoom accounts for Diak students are only created the first time they login at diak-fi.zoom.us. (more information about pre-assigning here)

(10) Reactions: Use the Reactions feature to collect non-verbal feedback from the participants. Through the Reactions menu, the participants can ask for a turn to speak, react with Yes or No, ask to slow down or speed up the presentation, and react with emojis.