Zoom FAQs

Read our guidance on creating an account in Zoom, and signing in via Single Sign On.

Read the detailed guidance on how to set up meetings in Zoom, and various options, including the differences between host/co-host and alternative-host.

This assumes you have already created a Zoom meeting and would like to send it to students.

There are two stages to this process:

1. accessing the unit mailing lists and creating the email
2. copy and pasting the meeting link information from Zoom to your email

1. Accessing the unit mailing lists and creating the email

• Visit www.bath.ac.uk/email/units/ to browse the lists by department (if you are having issues accessing the link, attempt refreshing your cache).
• Navigate to the department and select the relevant unit list (e.g. AB12345-2021AY@courses.bath.ac.uk)
• Draft an email to the relevant cohort

2. Copy and pasting the meeting link information from Zoom to your email

• If you are the meeting organiser, visit bath-ac-uk.zoom.us and sign-in (even if you scheduled the meeting in Moodle).
• (Note: if you did not schedule the Zoom meeting, it will not appear in your list of Zoom meetings and you will need to visit the Moodle page and copy the link from there).
• Select the Meeting from the list (note that recurring meetings don’t have a specified time will appear at the end of this list).
• 
• Press the “Copy Invitation” to copy the Invitation link to the clipboard
• 
• Paste the Zoom Invite link into the email to students and send.
• Optional: copy the meeting ID and passcode as an alternative way to join (participants only need the meeting link to join).

If you are running a regular session and want to set up a recurring link, you can set this up in two ways:

1. Using the Zoom activity in Moodle, schedule your meeting as described here and tick the “Recurring” checkbox.  This will make the meeting slot open-ended so the link can be used at any time.
2. If you want to set up more specific, recurring meeting slots, start off as above and tick the “Recurring” option in the Zoom activity in Moodle.  You will then need to go to bath-ac-uk.zoom.us and click the button to Sign In. Under Meetings in your Personal area, you will see details of the meeting you have set up. Click on the option to Edit the meeting and, under the Recurring meeting checkbox, choose the frequency of the recurrence (daily, weekly, monthly).  You will then be presented with a series of options to set the time and length of your recurring meetings.
3. The recurring sessions will not indicate what time they run, so we recommend you include a list of the times/dates in the link description for the meeting.

The Zoom Support site has a useful page on Scheduling recurring meetings too.

It is not recommended to schedule more than one meeting to run at the same time (e.g. two meetings at 10am, with you as host in one and an alternative host allocated to the other). This can sometimes result in the meetings closing. Instead ask each host to schedule their own meeting. You could use scheduling privileges for one person to schedule on behalf of another.

Zoom meetings cannot be restricted to a specific group of students. Any student with the meeting ID will be able to join a Zoom meeting if they sign in with their Bath SSO. As such we recommend properly labelling your Zoom meetings and providing students clear instructions regarding different meeting links.

After creating the Zoom meeting, please share the link (and any meeting IDs/Passcodes) with your external guests. They will be required to create a basic account on Zoom (free) to join the meeting or join with a Zoom account from another institution.

This step-by-step guide for external guests explains how to sign up and join meetings.

Only University of Bath members of staff with a registered Zoom account can be set as Alternative Hosts (i.e. not externals). If they are a teaching member of staff, please make sure they have registered their Zoom account.

By default, participants are not sent meeting invites (it is possible to send these manually to a cohort) so it is important to carefully label and signpost the meeting on your Moodle page.

The table below summarises the notifications for different users:

Meeting Information	Organiser	Alternative Host	Student (participant)
Appears in Zoom Meetings list?	Yes	No	No
Receive an email invite?	n/a	Yes	No
Receive email updates (time change/cancellation)?	n/a	Yes	No
Appears in Outlook calendar?	Only if linked with Zoom Outlook add-in	Only if linked .ics file is downloaded from the invite email	No
Appears in Moodle calendar?	No. Zoom is currently not able to pass this information to Moodle, even if scheduled using the Zoom activity.

We do not recommend scheduling a meeting on behalf of someone else and not joining it yourself. You would still be the host and any recordings would be saved in your My Folder. The suggested approach would be to use scheduling privileges.

Another member of staff (e.g. an administrator, director of teaching) can schedule a meeting on behalf of a colleague (e.g. lecturer, teaching staff), if that colleague has allocated them scheduling privileges beforehand. Please follow the instructions to allocate another member of staff to schedule on your behalf. If the meeting is recorded, it will be stored in the My Folder of the host – that is the person the meeting was scheduled on behalf of.

We don’t have the Zoom webinar add-on as part of the University license – only Zoom meetings. Zoom Meetings allow up to 300 participants to join and many of the features are similar to webinars. There are slight differences however; for example webinar chat allows the panel to review comments and meetings allow participants to unmute themselves by default (although this can be changed) – see a Meeting vs Webinar head to comparison.

Please contact tel@bath.ac.uk if you need more support in planning your session.

First you should create a recurring Zoom meeting in Moodle When you create a recurring meeting, this is only visible to the person scheduling the meeting.  Zoom then provides you with a file you can upload to your Outlook calendar, allowing you to have a record of those events.   

• In Zoom Cloud, My Meetings select the recurring meeting you have scheduled (You can click ‘Show all occurrences’ to check them).

• Click the “Outlook Calendar (.ics) file” and this will be downloaded to your PC.  

• Open Outlook on the web (outlook.office365.com) and sign in with your University username and password.
• Click Add calendar.  
• Select Upload from file and browse for the .ics file you previously downloaded. 
• Select the relevant calendar and click Import.
• You should see a pop-up message confirming the import. 
  

You can do this for stand-alone meetings too.

By default, students signing in with their Bath Single Sign-on will bypass the waiting room (the waiting room is for external users or students not signed in with Bath single sign-on).

Warning: overriding this default means hosts will have to “Admit all”, which can inadvertently allow external users or students not signed in with Bath single sign-on into a meeting.

Furthermore changing this setting will force all participants to the waiting room for all meetings you schedule (and will be inherited by the host). We do not recommend changing this setting unless necessary.

Go to the Bath Zoom on the web (bath-ac-uk.zoom.us) and Settings. Under the “Waiting Room Options”, click “Edit Options”.

To force all participants to go to the waiting room for all meetings you  schedule, click “Everyone” and then “Continue”.

Zoom have detailed instructions on how to test your setup here. You can test these settings in a meeting or better still visit zoom.us/test to test your setup before a meeting.

Also see: What can I do about audio issues?

The TEL team are unable to troubleshoot individual problems, particularly if this is a hardware/software issue particular to your setup. Some common fixes to issues are:

1. Try unplugging/replugging in devices.
2. Try rebooting your device.
3. Check the microphone settings and security permissions for your device:
   • Fix microphone problems (Windows)
   • Change the sound input settings on Mac
   • My Audio is Not Working on iOS or Android

Note: also see How do I test my microphone and webcam?

Zoom meetings created before the August 2021 Moodle upgrade will no longer appear in Moodle.

We recommend creating a new Zoom meeting link for the new academic year. Guidance on how to schedule a Zoom meeting can be found here. If you need to add a previously created link to your Moodle unit you can import Zoom meeting IDs from your Zoom app to your Moodle course.

You can watch the following video on guidance to importing a Zoom meeting ID into Moodle.

For staff, we recommend downloading the Zoom desktop app. This allows full control of the meeting and all features.

Students are advised to download the Zoom app (Windows/Mac/iOS/Android) as the browser version doesn’t allow students to respond to Polls or student to choose their breakout room.

You can have a maximum of 300 participants in total attend a Zoom meeting.

This video provides an overview of the meeting controls available in a Zoom meeting.

There are two ways that you can make a user a co-host.

During a meeting:

• Hover over a user’s video.
• Click the more icon (…).
• Click Make Co-Host.

Using the participants window (found at the bottom of the screen):

• Click on Manage Participants in the meeting controls at the bottom of the Zoom window.
• Hover over the name of the participant who is going to be a co-host, and choose More.
• Click Make Co-Host.

Once a participant has been made a co-host, they’ll have access to the co-host controls.

More information about co-hosts is available on Zoom’s help pages.

There are several ways to manage participants during a Zoom meeting such as: Mute participants, prevent participants from screen-sharing, and remove a participant. This help page explains ways in which to manage participants during a Zoom meeting. This video further explains how to use meeting controls during a Zoom meeting.

This short video explains how to use waiting rooms for drop-in sessions.

It is possible to turn off waiting rooms after you have started the session (this is suggested if you are presenting by yourself as it lets participants rejoin if they had an internet connection drop).

Users can only see the chat from when they joined the meeting. This means that:

• latecomers won’t be able to see items of chat from the start of the meeting.
• if staff/students leave and come back to a meeting (e.g. due to internet connection interruption) they won’t be able to see any of the chat prior to when they rejoined.

This short video explains how to create multiple-choice polls during a Zoom meeting. You can create a poll either in advance, or during the meeting. Only the person scheduling the meeting can create polls, but alternative hosts and co-hosts can run these polls during the meeting. You can download polling results after the meeting following the instructions on Zoom’s website.

Note: if you have scheduled the meeting using the Moodle plugin, and wish to create a poll in advance, please log into Zoom, go to the meeting tab,  the relevant meeting and add a poll as necessary.

Please note:  students will only be able to see and participate in Polls if they are using the desktop application or the Zoom mobile app. Those using a web browser (such as Chrome, Safari or Firefox) will not be able to see or access a poll.

You can create a maximum of 25 polls per meeting. If you are using a recurring meeting and reach this limit then you will need to either delete old polls or create a new recurring meeting.

Hosts can share their screens in Zoom. Hosts can give participants the ability to share their screens during the meeting by clicking on the options under “Share Screen”. Detailed guidance on Sharing a screen (including using two screens) can be found on Zoom’s website. A short video on youtube is also available.

This short video explains how to share and annotate your screen in a Zoom meeting.

Detailed guidance on annotations can be found on Zoom’s website, and detailed guidance on using a whiteboard can also be found on Zoom’s website.

Warning: if sharing a tablet screen, be aware to stop email and messaging notifications so they aren’t shared with students.

You can share you entire iPad screen from the Zoom desktop client via airplay (you will be prompted to download a small add-on in Zoom).

You can access this option by on the PC going to “Share Screen” > “iPhone/iPad” and following the instructions for connecting your ipad (full Zoom client and ipad/iphone sharing instructions).

Please note: the above option won’t work on campus because of how campus wifi is configured. 

Alternatively, if you have an Android tablet (or are on campus with an iPad), you can join the meeting on this second device and share your tablet’s screen in addition to being in the meeting on a computer/lectern PC. You should mute your tablet speakers and microphone and use this as device for screen sharing only.

Also see hub page: Capturing Handwritten Notes Electronically.

By default, all participants are able to annotate on a whiteboard when the host shares this with the group.  If you do not want students to be able to annotate a whiteboard space, you need to ‘disable annotation for others’ in the Whiteboard settings (see screenshot).  This option appears under More … in the toolbar when sharing a Whiteboard.

In the Share Screen options and under Advanced tab, select share “Content from 2nd Camera” (pictured below).

You may need to use the “Switch Camera” button (top left of screen, pictured below) to cycle through to the correct camera. This optimises the visualiser feed for best quality for students and featured as the main view in the meeting recording.

It is possible to rotate the visualiser feed in a Zoom meeting (this can be useful where you wish to have the visualiser arm at the top of the page and writing appears upside down) – no additional camera software is needed.

1. Select the Video Settings and under Camera, select the visualiser as the input.
2. At the top right of the preview pane, press Rotate 90° until the orientation is correct. You should also ensure Mirror my video is unchecked. This orientation will be remembered when next sharing Content from 2nd Camera
3. Under camera, revert the camera selection to your regular webcam.
4. Share your visualiser using the Share>Advanced>Content from 2nd Camera

Detailed guidance on how to pre-assign students into breakout rooms can be found on our Scheduling a Meeting page.

Notes:

• You can only pre-assign 200 students into breakout rooms in advance.
• The students will need to be pre-assigned with their University of Bath email addresses (if using CSV upload) or by typing their names into the search box.
• Students need to log in to the meeting with their University of Bath accounts. If they log in with a personal Zoom account then only those who logged in with their Bath accounts will be able to go into the pre-assigned rooms and the meeting host will need to assign the other participants manually.
• Students can log in to bath-ac-uk.zoom.us to use their Bath accounts. Or alternatively, switch account in the Zoom client and log in with SSO using their Bath credentials.

Further guidance of pre-assigning breakout rooms can be found on Zoom’s website.

You can create a maximum of 50 breakout rooms. For a comprehensive overview of breakout room functionality, see Zoom’s help page.

It is quick and easy to create breakout rooms during a meeting as Host. Only the Host of the meeting can create breakout rooms, but alternative hosts and co-hosts can move between breakout rooms during the session. There are two options to create breakout rooms during the meeting.

Automatically: You can set the number of rooms required and Zoom automatically assigns students into those rooms. You can subsequently move students into another room if required. Manually: You can stipulate the number of rooms required, and manually assign students into those rooms. Detailed guidance on managing breakout rooms can be found on Zoom’s Website, including a short video on YouTube.

Yes, a co-host or alternative host who is assisting the main host in the meeting can start and manage breakout rooms but there are some limitations.

Please note that if you choose Assign Automatically to create Breakout Rooms, late joiners to the meeting will not be automatically assigned and will need to be assigned manually.  

Similarly, any participant who leaves the meeting and later re-joins the meeting will not be automatically re-assigned to their previous group. Participants will need to know what group they were previously in if they want to be manually assigned back to the same group. 

There are a number of breakout rooms options that you can configure during the meeting, and the details are explained on Zoom’s website,  but these include:

• Allow Participants to choose room  – this lets students choose which breakout room they move to and move between rooms.
• Move all participants into breakout rooms automatically: Checking this option will move all participants into the breakout rooms automatically. If this option is unchecked, the participants will need to click Join to be added to the breakout room.
• Allow participants to return to the main session at any time: If this option is checked, the participants can move back to the main session from their meeting controls. If this is disabled, they need to wait for the host to end the breakout rooms.
• Breakout rooms close automatically after x minutes:If this option is checked, the breakout rooms will automatically end after the configured time.
  • Notify me when the time is up: If this option is checked, the host will be notified when the breakout room time is up.
• Countdown after closing breakout rooms: If this option is checked, the participants will be given a countdown of how much time they have left before being returned to the main room.

Additionally, participants will only be able to unmute themselves, chat, and share screen in breakout rooms IF the hosts enables this from main room’s Security settings(see below). Hosts should consider amending these settings when moving to/from breakout rooms, to allow collaboration between students whilst maintaining order in the main meeting.

E.g. You are hosting a meeting with multiple activities, and want the participants to be Automatically Assigned to a different set of groups for the different activities. After the first activity…  

 To reshuffle the participants into a new group: 

 Before you open the breakout room the second time you will need to click Recreate. 

You will then need to ensure that Assign automatically is chosen before again clicking Recreate. 

The participants will now be assigned to different groups. 

You can then Open All Rooms. 

During a breakout room session, the Host can broadcast a message to all breakout rooms at once (e.g. “Please return to the main room in 10 minutes”). Detailed guidance is on Zoom’s website, but a short animation is below:

Whilst participants will unlikely need technical guidance on working a breakout room, further information if needed is on Zoom’s website.

If the host has enabled “Participants can choose breakout room” they can do so on the desktop or mobile client via the breakout room option: see screenshots below.

Participants will only be able to unmute themselves, chat, and share screen in breakout rooms IF the hosts enables this from main room’s Security settings.

Currently, it is not possible to record breakout rooms.

The latest versions of the Zoom app (later than v5.3.0 for Win/OSX/Linux/android/ios, not the browser version of Zoom) allow students to pick their own breakout room (if enabled by the host). Students and staff both need the latest version of the app running.

Host can enable participants to choose rooms (either at the point of creation) or before opening rooms, which is pictured in the first and second screenshots, respectively.

Please see the corresponding FAQ for how students move themselves into breakout rooms.

You can use this “Let participants choose room” feature to:

• save on the administration of preloading breakout groups via csv upload: instead, simply share the list of rooms and students names.
• mix-up teacher allocated breakup groups: the csv upload only allows one set of breakout groups to be upload.
• dynamically create student breakout groups: for example, in response to student interest or Assessment for Learning outcome.

Hosts and participants need the Zoom app running (>v5.3.0 for Win/OSX/Linux/android/ios). It does not work on the browser version.

The host needs to have selected “Let participants choose room” or from the Breakout room settings, enabled “Allow Participants to choose room”.

Students might also need to update the app. On mobile devices this can be managed through the Google Play/App stores. On the desktop client go to the User Icon (top right) and select “Check for Updates”.

Note: if a few students can’t allocate themselves to a breakout room the Host is able to assign them to a room manually.

This is a comparison between the main features of breakout rooms in Microsoft Teams and Zoom. This list is not exhaustive.

Breakout room functionality	Microsoft Teams	Zoom
Pre-assign participants	Yes (up to 50 breakout rooms).	Yes (up to 100 breakout rooms) Participants must have and join with a University of Bath Zoom account
Manage breakout rooms	The meeting organiser and presenters. The meeting organiser or co-organiser(s) can assign additional breakout room managers once the meeting has started.	Host and alternative host can open and manage breakout rooms. A co-host can manage breakout rooms but a) they must be using the Zoom client and b) The host must be using the Zoom client. This functionality does not work using the browser.
Participant can send a message to the host from breakout rooms	No – only as a private chat message on Teams	Yes
Participant functionality in breakout rooms	Participants turn into presenters when they join a breakout room (they can record/share screen). The meeting organiser needs to change permissions in each room to stop this during the meeting. If pre-assigned breakout rooms are used, the meeting organiser can do this before the meeting in the breakout room options. Host can disable meeting chat.	Participants stay as participants. Participants can’t share their screens unless the host enables this in the security settings of the main meeting.
Assign breakout rooms automatically or manually within the meeting	Yes	Yes
Users can choose their own breakout rooms	No	Yes
Host can broadcast a message to participants in breakout rooms	Yes, host can make an announcement.	Yes, host can broadcast a message to all breakout rooms.
Recreate and re-use breakout rooms during a meeting	Yes	Yes
Set a time limit	Yes	Yes
Live captions in breakout rooms	Yes	No

Further information and details about breakout rooms are available:

Microsoft Teams breakout rooms

Zoom breakout rooms

To record a meeting, the Host should press the “record” button at the appropriate time. The Host may wish to request the permission of participants before recording, but this is not a requirement as our Student Registration Document covers recording students for teaching purposes. During the meeting, you can pause or stop the recording. If you pause the meeting, a separate video is created once you start recording again (e.g. if you press pause once, you will end up with two videos).

If you record a meeting in Zoom, it will automatically be moved to the meeting organiser’s My Folder in Re:View/Panopto (in a sub-folder called Meeting Recordings, meeting organisers will receive an email notification). A copy will also be saved to Zoom Cloud Recordings for 30 days after which it will be moved to the recycle bin (there is no need to do anything with the Zoom Cloud recording).

From the Panopto > My Folder > Meeting Recordings Folder, the meeting organiser should move the recording to the corresponding Moodle/Panopto folder, which will share it with the cohort.

We recommend adding a link and/or an embedded video into your Moodle page so that it is clearly signposted to students.

By default, the recording will show any screen shares (and the presenters video insert). If this is not running the recording will show the gallery view participants (see below), which will include students if their webcams are turned on.

It is possible to change the default Panopto recording to show the screen share and active speaker only (this is normally the presenter or a participant if they are speaking) by turning off the gallery view recording:

The recording will be stored with the account of the person scheduling the meeting’s Zoom and Panopto account, so only they will be able to access the recording (even if they did not attend the meeting and an alternative host ran the meeting instead).

If you did schedule the meeting but you can’t see your Meeting Recordings folder in the Panopto My Folder, there may be an issue linking your zoom account to Panopto. To correct this, please ensure your email address on Moodle is in the form abc123@bath.ac.uk (this will automatically update the email in Panopto).

It may take some time for the meeting recording to appear on Panopto (up to 24 hours). The person who scheduled the meeting will receive an email when it is ready.

Due to the demand on the Re:View service, some recordings may take longer to process than usual. If you have remembered to press ‘record’ in Zoom, and have received a notification that your recording will soon be available, it should just be a question of remaining patient while it completes processing, which may take up to 24 hours, (although will usually be quicker).

The simplest way to download the meeting chat is to go the Recordings folder in Zoom Cloud select the recording and find a copy of the “Chat file” next to the meeting recording.

• Log into Zoom in the browser.
• Click on recordings on the left hand side of your screen.
• You will see a list of available recordings. Click on Files.
• Download the relevant chat file.

Downloading the chat directly from the meeting is disabled by default. If you enable it for yourself, you will do so for everyone (including students). To change this go to My Settings in Zoom and untick “Prevent participants from saving chat”.

Further detailed instructions can be found on the Zoom help pages.

If “Share Poll Results” is selected, the Zoom meeting recording will not show the polling results (despite students being able to see it at the time).

If it is important that these are visible in the recordings, either:

• as a host, share your full screen and manually drag the poll results window so it is visible to students (and the recording)
• use an alternative platform (e.g. TurningPoint) in combination with screen sharing.

There are two ways to access the usage reports: A) via Moodle or B) on the web (bath-ac-uk.zoom.us). These reports contain the time a participant joined and the duration they logged in for.

A) Viewing attendee lists in Moodle

This method is easy to find as you just go to the meeting invitation on Moodle. It also allows any teacher on the course to view the reports.

1. Go to the Zoom Meeting Activity and the “Previous Meetings” tab.
2. Click “Report” for the Meeting you are interested in.
3. The meeting report details the participants name, email, join time, leave time and duration they attended for.
4. You can “Export as a CSV file” to download the file.

Please note, there may be duplicate entries for participants if they have rejoined the meeting.

By default, only the host or cohost can initiate a meeting recording (this is normally just the teaching staff).

If a students create their own meetings, and acts as hosts/cohosts then they can record their own meetings.

You can obtain a transcript of a meeting by enabling transcripts in recording settings in your Zoom account BEFORE the meeting starts.

• Log into Zoom on the web.
• Navigate to Settings on the left-hand side.
• Click on the Recording tab.
• Enable Audio Transcript.
• This will only be enabled for meetings that are recorded.

During the meeting the host must record.

After the meeting, the transcript can be downloaded from your cloud recordings

• Sign in to the Zoom cloud.
• Select ‘Recordings’ on the left-hand side of your screen.
• Select the recording by clicking on the name of it.
• You will see an audio transcript file for download.

More information can be found here.