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1. The meeting Presenter (usually the organizer or leader) is in control of the online meeting and should use discretion to mute all or some participants as appropriate to minimize background noise distractions and too much simultaneous speaking. He can mute/unmute at will when he calls on participants to speak on an issue.

2. Participants should login to the online application and meeting link, and set up their own audio and video properties to ensure functionality prior to the meeting. This will eliminate wasted time and chatter during the start of the meeting.

3. Participants should review preread materials sent out with the meeting agenda and online conference notice before the meeting start time to avoid unnecessary discussion and disruption during the meeting.

4. Participants should set up in a quiet space with good lighting and good connection speed as much as possible.

5. Participants should remember that they are on camera during the meeting and until they close the application or turn off their audio and/or video switch in the application. They should remain alert and avoid being distracted by email, texts, and other things. They should mute phones. If a participant needs to take a phone call, he should step out of the meeting by turning off audio and video or disconnecting from the meeting.

6. Participants should be brief and concise with questions or remarks to the whole group. They are encouraged to use the chat feature to send comments, ask questions, or say something relevant, especially with a large group meeting. Participants should try to speak one at a time. Multiple people speaking may cause electronic audio stutter in the Meeting application. For large groups, the Presenter or leader may need to call on and/or unmute certain participants for their input.

7. Presenters are encouraged to have pictures saved and presented in pdf or png format, since the file size is usually smaller than jpg.

8. Participants who are late to join the meeting should remain quiet to avoid interrupting the ongoing discussion. The meeting leader will announce late arrivals as needed.

9. The leader should try to be precise in announcing agenda topics, motions, voting, and action items as they come up so that Smart Notes can more easily identify them. The leader or designee should try to set bookmarks at various critical points in during the meeting so they can more easily be found when playing back or reviewing the meeting. The leader or designee may turn recording on/off as appropriate to topics, breaks, etc. Once the meeting is over, the recording will aggregate the recorded parts into a single file.

The new normal for office work during the coronavirus pandemic is telecommuting, powered by video conferencing tools like Zoom. The thing is, by default, Zoom tries to get you to download and install its app, which has had known security issues in the past.

You don’t need to download the app to use Zoom though, just your browser is sufficient enough to use the core functionality so you can telecommute in relative safety. We’ll show you how because Zoom goes out of its way to hide this unless the meeting host changes some default settings.

You can see that for yourself below, where you don’t get the option to connect from your browser until after you’ve already clicked to join a meeting. Sheesh.

Not only is this a terrible user interface – seemingly to drive up app downloads – it’s also unworkable in the current situation. Many home workers will have locked-down corporate laptops to work from home and won’t be able to install the app. It’s not like they can ask IT to manually install it for them either.

Once you know that the link comes after you click to join the meeting, you can be on the lookout to click so you don’t have to install the app. That’s only one part of the equation though, as meeting hosts can make things simpler for invitees.

[The following section applies to ZOOM Hosts. I have attempted to implement this. I hope it is working. SGS]

Here’s how to be a responsible Zoom meeting host in these trying times:

Oh, and Google Chrome is your best bet. You can connect to Zoom from Firefox, Safari, Edge, or even Internet Explorer, but Chrome has the most functionality.