How to invite people to your Zoom meeting - tekiniko

It’s led to a massive surge in users, but the work from home ethos during the current COVID-19 crisis has resulted in a bad couple of weeks for popular video conferencing app Zoom.

While many companies are already using the videoconferencing app Zoom for business meetings, interviews, and other purposes, individuals who are facing long days without contact with friends and family are moving to Zoom for face-to-face and group get-togethers.

One thing to keep in mind: while one-to-one video calls can go as long as you want, any group calls on Zoom are limited to 40 minutes. If you want to have longer talks without interruption, you can either pay for Zoom’s Pro plan ($14.99 a month).

Once you have an account, you can invite people to a Zoom meeting a few different ways.

If you’re using the desktop or mobile apps, click or tap on the Meetings tab.

While you're there:

• On the desktop app, if you click the “Copy Invitation” button on the screen, a message with your Zoom meeting’s URL, ID, and phone dial-in information will be copied to your clipboard that you can drop in an email or a text message.
• On the mobile app, when you tap the “Send Invitation” button, you’ll be presented with three options: “Send Message,” which will let you text your meeting URL to someone; “Send Email,” which will open up an email with your meeting’s information; or “Copy to Clipboard,” which will copy your Zoom meeting’s URL and meeting ID to your phone’s clipboard.

You can also invite people to your meeting while you’re already in it:

• On the desktop app, on the toolbar that shows up when you move your mouse in the meeting window, click the “Invite” button. When you do, Zoom will open a window where you can invite your Zoom contacts, send an email with information on how to access your Zoom meeting, copy your meeting URL to your clipboard, or copy a longer message with your meeting URL and dial-in information to your clipboard.

• On the mobile app, tap “Participants” on the bottom row of icons and then tap the “Invite” button on the bottom of the next screen. When you do, you’ll be able to send an email invite, send a text message invite, invite your Zoom contacts, or copy the meeting URL to your phone’s clipboard.

Zoom faced heavy criticism for its privacy policy detailing intrusive data collection practices. Then, the app’s users started to report an increase in so-called “Zoom bombing”, seeing uninvited guests crashing meetings and chats.