Whoever sets up the meeting in Zoom is the host and should be present and active during the session. Services should be set up by someone who is available to moderate, not one of the presenters and not someone who won't be in attendance.
As host, you can control whether attendees are muted or not, and you can set it up so they cannot unmute themselves accidentally.
- When you initiate the session, click on Manage Participants along the bottom of the screen. A panel will appear on the right side that lists all the participants. At the bottom of that panel, you will see buttons to Mute All or Unmute All.
- By clicking on More at the bottom of the Manage Participants panel, you can allow or prevent attendees from unmuting themselves. You can also select the leaders and unmute them for the duration of the session, assuming they will manage the noise levels on their end.
- During hymns please do not unmute everyone because that seriously degrades the sound quality of the music.
- Everyone can be unmuted before and after the service so they may greet each other and then say goodbye. During the service, all but the service presenters should be forcibly muted. Any other communication should be managed via the Chat window.
- Additional assistance can be found on the Zoom Help Center website.
Preview your background for glare and other distractions prior to beginning your presentation. Check the angle of your screen to ensure you are fully in the frame, able to look directly at the camera, centered and not cut off at the top of your head.
Keep the Chat window open and glance at it occasionally so that attendees can let you know if there are technical issues like not being able to hear you or see your video/screen. At the beginning of each session, tell the participants to use the chat function to share this info if necessary. Or you can ask participants to raise their hands if they can’t hear or see you, which you will be able to see in their video image.
Presenters with low bandwidth connections may need to mute their video when they are speaking to minimize interference.
It’s best to use your computer’s microphone directly when speaking. Headsets can frequently cause problems in online meetings. They can create static and are another potential point of failure for audio.
Encourage attendees to use Chat to comment, ask questions, etc. That way, they can interact and engage with other participants without distracting from the presentation.
The Chat function includes a drop-down menu that allows the user to have their comment see by “Everyone” or just a specific individual (private chat). Just select the name of the person you want to see your comment, then type your message and hit ‘send. But be careful with this as is it very easy to send a message meant for one person
