Zoom Settings

Mark
We have been over the past couple weeks talking about the videoconferencing, zoom and everything else. You’ve got information regarding zoom, have you?

Seamus
Yes, I think we just keep on going. Zoom has really increased the number of settings that are available to you. And they’ve also put a lot of these settings on sort of a higher security default. So it’s worth going into your zoom, when you enter your web zoom page, where you first sign in and just going through all the settings like they’ve got waiting room, by default, so participants go into a waiting room, and for small meetings or if you’re just doing one on one, that’s you know that’s a bit of a waste of time. So, I turn the waiting room off so people just come straight into my zoom. Another thing that happens is they turn, by default, and these are all for security reasons but default screen sharing off. And where the way I do it I do a lot of screen-sharing with my clients so I turn that on, so that both myself and the participant can share screens. You can turn passwords.

Mark
If you’ve got a screen, you’ve got something like a spreadsheet, you can bring that in and show that to everyone using Zoom

Seamus
Correct, and I use that a lot for my web clients, or my software training clients, we can look at the screen we can both look at the screen together. Even though we’re geographically apart. And it’s a lot easier to say you know if you’re looking at, say a spreadsheet to put your mouse over a, a cell or whatever and then you know show people exactly what you mean.

Mark
OK, yeah that’s a handy little thing.

Seamus
It’s absolutely brilliant. Yeah, I’ve got clients that I’ve never met and I’ve done, sort of everything over Zoom so I just spoke to a client this morning from from California, so I’ll be having a Zoom with them next week.

Mark
Ooh. OK, you are worldwide aren’t you!

Seamus
Yeah, you can be with the work I do; it’s quite incredible but for that sort of work, having the ability for both people to screen share really really does make a huge difference.

Mark
Okay. And have these all been brought in because of the security concerns, they had before.

Seamus
They have made it more secure because of the security issues. So they made it more secure by default, but you can make it less secure if you wish, like, you can have it so that no one needs a password (I always have a password but I have it so the password is in the link that I send to people). So it’s still one click for them to join, but I only send that link to individual people and it’s got the password embedded in it so you know where there was zoom bombing a few months ago, they can’t do that anymore. But it’s still easy for people to log in.

Mark
And for somebody to learn about these changes to learn about how these happen, does Zoom actually have a go-to page or a help page or anything else for people to study this?

Seamus
They do now they’ve got very good help files and they also you can get I think it’s weekly might be twice-weekly email from zoom, which is what I do just to see what they’re doing, and it’s probably, I mean it’s my job to know a bit more about software so it’s probably not relevant for most people, but there are an awful lot of changes that are happening and have been happening because Zoom is really tightening up their security,

Mark
Honestly, do you think after we’re over this COVID-19, are we still, because we’ve been forced also into this digital age, for those that are computer savvy, you get we’re gonna see that continuing?

Seamus
I really believe so yeah. I’ve got a client who runs a dance studio. And, you know, for kids and that’s obviously a very physical environment. She had to close down her studio during the COVID time. And it’s still closed down. But she changed to zoom so she does zoom lessons with the kids. Now, it still dropped a lot of her income but she’s realised that when she is allowed to open her studio again, she’ll go probably half and half like half virtual and half, physical, and I think there’ll be a lot of people who will realise that that’s a really good way for them and a lot of businesses will allow people to remote work, I believe, a lot of them will say you know it’s too hard but then things like zoom or any, any video conferencing software are really, really important. So I think zoom sort of capitalising on this at the moment they’re just going flat out, making sure it’s easy for people that you can customise it and it’s very very secure.

Mark
OK, sounds like something maybe we even talk further on because of these advances in these computer programmes and in the digital age. We’re all gonna come to grips with them even though they have sort of two left thumbs or something like me.

Seamus
Yes. Yeah.

Mark
Oh you didn’t have to agree!

Seamus
I was agreeing with the first part of your statement. Is that a good comeback?