Zoom calls its impromptu virtual get-togethers Instant Meetings or Meet Now. To start a meeting, launch the Zoom desktop client. Click on the Home icon and then on the New Meeting icon.You are now hosting a live, one-person Zoom meeting, as this figure displays. Zoom user interface during active meetings.Astute observers may notice several things about this figure.

This list provides some quick advice on getting started with Zoom, maximizing its benefits, and minimizing the issues that you experience with it. No, the following pages do not represent a comprehensive list of what to do and not to do, but I have condensed my suggestions into a snackable list. ©Cabeca de Marmore/Shutterstock.

Screen-sharing and annotation tools have been around for decades. In fact, if Zoom had failed to include these valuable features, many people would rightfully consider them glaring omissions, including yours truly.Meetings & Chat is more than up the task. You can share your screen with others and even allow them to control your computer’s mouse and keyboard.

No one forces you to enable video during your Zoom meetings. You can always join via audio only. Still, from time to time you’re going to want the world to see you. ©Toltemara/Shutterstock.com Looking your best in Zoom A seldom-used Zoom feature called Touch Up My Appearance purportedly helps smooth out the skin tone on your face.

As former president Dwight D. Eisenhower once astutely observed, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” In the context of Zoom, convoking a spontaneous meeting makes sense in certain circumstances, especially when text-based communication just isn’t working. Taken to the extreme, though, any given person’s work life would be unmanageable and even downright chaotic if she couldn’t at least try to plan her days.

Just like in real life, you won’t always host a Zoom meeting. Sometimes you’ll participate in meetings with people from external organizations. Zoom makes it remarkably simple to join an existing meeting, whether you know the host’s PMI or the meeting’s URL. Joining a meeting using the host’s PMI Walter invites you to a meeting via email.

The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked devastation throughout the world; in February, 2020, companies and individuals began turning to Zoom as a way to continue conducting business meetings (from individual home environments) and to stay connected with friends and family. Even many televisions shows have adopted a Zoom format for interviewing guests.

Zoom offers a bevy of robust features for meetings. (Short version: Thanks to Zoom, hosts and participants can perform many useful tasks.) There’s a chasm, though, between could and should. Put simply, just because Zoom lets you enable or disable a feature doesn’t mean that you should do it. ©fizkes/Shutterstock.

As I write these words in June 2020, the global pandemic is in full force. At some point, things will go back to normal — although most likely in dribbles. Zoom’s suite of tools, however, will remain vital work and educational staples for the foreseeable future.Make no mistake, though: Hundreds of millions of people are using Zoom in remarkable and innovative ways every day.