Using Zoom? Here are 11 features you should know about:

COVID-19 and social distancing measures are changing the way we work and while we might be missing out on office water cooler conversations, working remotely is helping us embrace and use features of products we didn't know about (did someone mention a beauty filter?). Here's a list of features I wish I'd known about before I started using Zoom.

1. If you're the host of a Zoom meeting you can manage participants in a meeting (mute them, unmute them, stop their video or screen share, put people in waiting rooms).
2. You can see everyone who is on your call as a list by clicking the 'Participants' icon at the bottom of your screen. You can also create your own Brady Bunch moment by changing your video layout into Gallery View.
3. If you're looking for feedback from your attendees, you can ask them to give non-verbal feedback through icons and reactions. Instead of people physically waving their hands to get your attention, they can virtually raise their hand (you'll see this in the participant list) if they want to speak, instead of people awkwardly unmuting themselves to tell you they can hear you, get them to use the 'yes' and 'no' buttons.
4. Talking about muting people, when you schedule a Zoom meeting you can make it a default that people's videos are off when they join and under 'Advanced Options' you can select to mute participants on entry.
5. When scheduling a meeting, you can also make it so the meeting is automatically recorded. Under 'Advanced Options' choose to record the meeting automatically and save it in the cloud (you'll get an email when your recording is ready to download)
6. If you want to chat with people during the meeting can choose to chat with everyone on the call or to a specific person who is on the call.
7. If you've got a large meeting or your meeting was set up by someone else, you can ask them to make you a co-host during the meeting so you both can manage participants.
8. Changing your virtual background is super easy and sometimes hilarious.
9. Zoom meetings can support quite a few people joining but if you're expecting 300+ you'll probably need to get a webinar licence added to your account.
10. If your internet connection is dodgy don't forget you can join a Zoom meeting via telephone (audio only) or use the Zoom iPhone or Andriod app to get basically all the functions you get from the computer.
11. As with any meeting, it's always important to have someone to lead and manage the meeting - it makes it so much smoother!

Did I miss a Zoom feature you think everyone should know about? Let me know!