Inviting Someone to Participate in a Zoom Meeting

Setting the meeting up in Zoom:

You'll need to visit https://zoom.us to sign up for a free account. You can do meetings from your web browser or from an app you can download to your phone, tablet or other device. You'll only need an account to set up and/or host a meeting. Your family members do not need an account.

Once logged in, you schedule the meeting by clicking “Schedule” or "Schedule a Meeting" in Zoom.

The next screen allows you to add the date and time, with a description (e.g. "Family Meeting"). You likely do not want to check "recurring meeting," unless you plan to meet regularly.

Consider not requiring a password, as you want to make it as simple as possible for your family members to join.

For Audio options, I would allow both telephone and computer, in case their internet is not strong enough to provide computer audio.

Calendar options – Google calendar is probably the most widely used calendar now.

Video: If you choose “yes” to both, then your video will start when you join, and their video will start when they join.

Under Advanced Options, you can choose to enable participants to join before you as the host arrive. We recommend this, as it allows people to join at their leisure.

You can also choose to mute participants upon entry, but this might not be a good idea as it could be tricky for your folks to understand how to unmute their microphone.

You may also be prompted to grant Zoom permission to access your calendar – choose yes in order to have the meeting automatically added to your calendar.

The scheduled meeting will now show up when you are in Zoom:

Inviting your people

You have 4 options to invite your people to the meeting.

One option is to send the person to zoom.us, click on “Join a Meeting” and provide them the Meeting ID from the scheduled meeting. This would require them to cut and paste the meeting ID from an email, so it could create some confusion. This can be done through a phone or tablet app as well.

A second option: within the scheduled meeting, you will see an option to copy the invitation. Choose yes, and it will then be copied to your clipboard. You can then paste the invitation into an email (see helpful hint below that suggests providing only the Zoom link), and ask your family members to join the video call.

Dear Ted,

For our family meeting on _________, I have set up a video conference through Zoom. Just click on the link below and follow the instructions to connect. I will be sharing my video
so you can see me during the call, and I’d like you to share your video as well if you can.

Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/6116183719

Most tablets and laptops have a built in webcam. If you need help finding or operating your webcam, please let me know. The only other requirement is to be connected to the internet!

If you have any problems connecting, just give me a call at _______.

The third option is to send an invitation through Google calendar. Just click on the event, choose edit, and add your invitee's email into the calendar event which will generate an automatic invitation with all of the Zoom details included. If they accept the invitation, it will show up on their calendar as well as yours.

One helpful hint: The automatic Zoom invitation can be a little confusing. You may want to only include subject, date and time with the link to join the meeting (highlighted in yellow) and leave out all of the phone numbers. Otherwise, your family members may think they only have to call in, or they will log in and call in, resulting in audio feedback and confusion once they are in the meeting. If you are sending an invitation from your Google calendar, make sure you edit the event to only include the link before sending the invitation.

The fourth option is to Host a Meeting right away, and invite your people within the ongoing meeting. From your account menu, you'll select "Host a Meeting : With Video On" and invite people within the meeting. You may have to give your device permission to open Zoom or install the application. When you click the Invite button, you'll be prompted which email account you want to sue, and the invitation will be copied into an email that is automatically generated.

Standard Zoom information language:

Gudorf Law Group is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: GLG's Zoom Meeting
Time: Mar 31, 2020 07:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://zoom.us/j/6116183719

Meeting ID: 611 618 3719

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Meeting ID: 611 618 3719