How to Use Zoom

The first step to using Zoom is choosing a plan. In this video, Adam will help you make the most logical decision for yourself or your organization when choosing between Zoom's free or paid plans.

Hello. My name is Adam Gordon, an entertainer with ITProTV. And I'm gonna be your host for our how to use zoom youtube cereal. In this first episode, we're gonna take a look at the difference between what many of you probably think of as the free or basic version of zoom and the paid versions. Whichever business version based on licensing you may choose to use a lot of you. Especially if your students may be starting to use zoom because your school's gone to remote off campus delivery during these kind of crazy times. You're being asked to use zoom to spin up a meeting, connect with your student peers and colleagues right and or with teachers or your business professional and you're using zoom to be able to drive collaboration interaction while you're working remotely. You may very well just be using the free version. So I thought it would be good as we get started with our series, show you the key differences and some of the important things to consider. As you're figuring out which plan or which version of zoom will make the most sense with you. We're gonna start by looking at the zoom website and quickly take a look at the plans and pricing that are available. There's a couple of key distinctive differences. I want to point out to you now, once we're done with that, I'm gonna load the zoom app up and show you what some of those differences translate to in terms of the navigation. The look and feel and the experience you're gonna have as you log into zoom for the first time and every time as you start to use it. Let me no pun intended. When I say this zoom in, so you can see a little more closely what we're doing here. I am on the zoom website but I'm in the United States, so you can see the RL up there zoom dot us. So, if this looks a little bit different depending on where you are in the world, just go and google four or go directly to zoom wherever you may be localized. It will essentially translate into the same thing for you and on the zoom website, right up here in the navigation area, right to the right of the zoom name and the solutions area. These plans and pricing. I'm gonna click on that link when I do that, we're just gonna see the paid shift and it's gonna show us what the different plans are. That's gonna give us the opportunity to compare some things here. Now, regardless of what version of the paid service you use, you'll see as we go left to right, navigating on the page, starting with basic right here to my right, as you can see your left as you're looking on the screen, that's gonna be where we get the free options. We'll take a look at that in a moment. But to the right of that, as you go across the screen, left to right, three different business plans, pro business and or enterprise pay as you go per user per month, they call users hosts by the way. If you take a look here, you'll see just quickly that all of those say $14.99, $19.99. Whatever the localized version of currency would be for you around the world, this is in US dollars. But whatever it is per month per host to host is a user on the platform. So when you look at that, you'll see that it gives you some information. The pro plan says however many users you want to on board for small businesses, small teams, you pay $15 just rounding up 15 US per month per host. So, you have 10 users, 10 hosts. You pay 100 and $50 per month. When you look at business, it says $19.99. Let's round up and say $20 US per month per host. But right below asterisk minimum of 10 house, you would have to spend at least the equivalent of 10 users a month at $20 a user or $200 and kind of figure that out as you go. And there are options to opt in and buy whatever plan you want, when we look at the basic plan, which is what the free plan is called. By the way, it's called the basic plan. You'll see, it says personal meeting free. We like free no money involved. And you can sign up right here. If you don't already have an account, just click there. It's very simple sign up process. You'll be asked to provide some information, either an email address and a password and or sign in with your google or your facebook accounts if you have one or both of those linking them and then creating an account. It's a very painless, very easy process. And I'm gonna show you where to download and get access to the software if you have to install it as well. In just a moment. It's right here on the web page, just up at the right hand corner. But what I want to show you just before we do that and get into the app is the number of participants and the time limit associated with meetings. Cuz that's really where the free version versus any of the paid versions is differentiated most starkly most obviously, you'll see in the free version we could have up to 100 participants in a meeting. That's great. No problem. And for the basic on boarding of the paid version, the pro plan, you also have a 100 participant limit, but it does give you a link that says, hey, you can get more if you need to. As I scroll over, you'll notice for some of the higher level plans, we can get 300 participants or 500 and more depending on what we're doing and how we license and you can see it scales very, very high, depending on the number of users you may need. So one of the first things we notice is that while it's free, we do get a fairly large number of users, a 100 participants for most of us. Especially if you're a student just interacting with members of your class and your teacher, very unlikely you're gonna have more than 100 participants in any single event. And if you do your school was probably set up one of the paid plans and has scaled the meeting capacity so that you can have those very large classes. If you are a business user interacting with different members of your organization, perhaps an extended team, again, your company may be paying for zooming, in which case they are and you don't have to worry about the limits they figured that out. But if it's just you and some people that have decided to use, especially if you're small or medium sized business really looking to control costs and I totally understand that it's very important all the time. Let alone during times like this, then as long as you limit your meetings to less than 100 participants, you're good, no problem. Free platform will work for you and will work just fine. You can have unlimited 1 to 1 meetings. You and I and if you're watching me right now, we could set up a 1 to meeting parker, our director for us behind our camera for this episode. He and I could set up a meeting right now and I could have unlimited 1 to 1 meetings, meaning no limit on the number of meetings I can have with a single individuals. So as long as your meetings are limited to one person, have as many of them as you like and they can go on as long as you need them to. Also very important to think about that because our third differentiator here is a time limit but a time limit it says on group meetings, 40 minute limit on group meetings. Now if you click on the little, hey, I need some information indicator here. What it really tells you as you can see is that Zoom offers some other plans that may not have this restriction. It says a basic plan is a 40 minute time limit on meetings with three or more total participants. So a one on one meeting is not gonna be limited by time, two people meeting is a one on one meeting, right? But when you add a third person into that meeting, which let's be honest, most of us probably have meetings with two or more people, right? So what they're basically saying is hey, if it's just you and one other person as many meetings as you want, as long as you want. No problem. But when you really start to use this to collaborate with multiple people, that meeting is gonna be limited to 40 minutes. Now, that may not be a big deal, most of us can probably get most of our meeting's done in 40 minutes or less. If we're really just focused on getting in there and doing what we gotta do, for any reason you run past 40 minutes, the meeting stops, everybody has to get out. You have to schedule another one a minute or two later, get everybody back in. It's a little bit inconvenient, but it's not the end of the world by any means. Now notice that if you look at any of the paid plants, we do have a meeting duration limit at 24 hours, meaning we can have a meeting that goes on not for a business day. But a full actual day, 24 hours, which is pretty long for most meetings, right? And we don't want to set a meeting for 24 hours straight. But, if you do have a need to have extended meetings, maybe a. A group of people have to be on for, the business day interacting maybe a development team or an engineering team that needs to be able to work through some sort of project. And you're gonna do a meeting with a white board and really do things for extended periods of time, you can do that. But instead of having a chunk it at 40 minute intervals, if you're paying, you actually have the capability to extend it now and future episodes in our series definitely be on the lookout for them. We're gonna spend several different episodes looking at all the aspects of meetings including, setting up a meeting and using with the white boarding function like I mentioned, so be on the lookout for those of your courage but how to do that. It's definitely worth your time. So, we've seen the basic idea behind some of the key differentiators between the plans. I promised you just before we load, the app up that I'll show you where to download the app if you needed to. You'll notice them at the upper right hand corner of the web page where it says resources. I've just click to pull down that little arrow there, and the first thing says download the zoom client, the Windows client, the Mac client, you can get the client for mobile devices, the iPad for instance, and or the android, the iPhone, any of those mobile operating systems through the appropriate app stores. I run it on my phone, I have an android based operating system on my phone. I run the zoom client, they're downloaded it through the app store set it up, linked it. I'm gonna show you how to log in right now, so I just logged on the first time I downloaded it and it works just fine. So you can easily get that, with no trouble if you want to just be aware of that. Right so what I wanna do now is actually bring up the zoom app and log in, nobody to do this twice. I'm gonna start the Zoom map, show you how to search for it and start it. I'm gonna log on the first time, as my free account user show you the look and feel and quickly point out a couple of things, from the navigation perspective that are a little bit different in the free or the basic version, or log out. I'll log back in doing the same thing, same app, same log on screen, but I'm gonna use my paid account we have our business plan that IT Pro tv so I'm gonna log on as an IT Pro tv user and we'll see the look and feel is a slightly different look and feel. In terms of the navigation on this we'll do a little compare and contrast here. Right so if you need to find the Zoom app the first time you're trying to do this I'm running Windows 10. So I'm just gonna go down, to my start menu and I'm gonna load up my start menu and quickly just start start typing the word zoom. Using our search feature in Windows, it will immediately bring up the app and the shortcut to it, I don't have to go scrolling through my program list to find it and I'll be able to load it right away. So let's just take a look at that, I'll zoom out so you could see it while I do that, I'm gonna start typing immediately start typing Zoom. You can see down here as I did that, it fills in on my search bar right down there and then you'll see that I can go ahead click start zoom, I'm gonna do that, It's gonna bring up the app for me. Give it just a moment, and when it does that I'm gonna be invited to either join an existing meeting if there is one or I'm gonna be invited to sign in. Now, we wanna log in we don't have a currently a scheduled meeting so I'm gonna click sign in, and we're gonna get our sign in screen. I'm invited to sign and using an email address and password, and I'll do that, but notice I have some options as I mentioned google, facebook, you have those accounts or some sort of single sign on provider. If there's an integration with your directory service that your IT department is set up. Those of you that are using the basic or free version may not have that unless your school for instance has set that up and your on boarding from school and they say hey go click on that option and log in with your user your school idea or something. But, most of you are probably gonna log in with an email address so that's what we're gonna do, I'm gonna go ahead and type in my email address for my free or my basic account 365 guy, at itprotvdemonew.microsoft.com. That's my email address and my password whatever it may be. [BLANK_AUDIO] There are some complexity requirements and minimum requirement in terms of lengths, things like that. You'll see those one of the upcoming episodes later on as we go through the portal, look at some of the settings just let make sure I show you where those are. If there is an issue, you forgot your password, great link to recover it, they're pretty simple if you wanna stay signed in. By the way, a lot of us like to log in and just, have that log on happen and then kind of cash it enough to worry about logging in all the time. You can check that box off or uncheck it really up to you on the web page, when you get a log into the portal to run behind the scenes. Look at some of the settings that check Mark is enabled by default on the web page, it's not enabled here in the app just so you know. All right, so I'm gonna go ahead and click sign in, I'm gonna move out just so we could see the app open up when it does that little bit easier to see it when it does that give it just a second comes up nice and big. Let's make that full screen, and what we'll see is we've landed here on our home page and we can see that by navigating up to the top where are icons representing our tool elements and shortcuts are, we see there are four of them and we'll be exploring those in upcoming episodes. You can see chat meetings and contacts, so they're moving left to right. And we see we have some, in this case, four Buttons that are interactive really on the home screen, primarily around doing the most common of activities that we think we need to typically rely on some form, which is setting up meetings, scheduling them, joining them and sharing things in them. So all of that's available there, and again, we'll look at that in more detail in some upcoming episodes. We have a live tile here that represents our day and time for our calendar. Nice you can see, currently Monday March 30 as I'm filming this episode for you to kick off our series. You can see the time I'm on the eastern coast of the US, you can see that, and you'll see that my calendar shows no upcoming meetings today. Now, the first thing, that we notice here about the basic, the free version versus the paid version will log out and log back in and take a look at the paid version in just a couple of minutes. Is that, although I can see my calendar in theory, nothing scheduled right now. There's no link here in the basic version on this page. On this tile, to allow me to link my calendar directly, keep that in mind because when we log on and look at the paid version, what that experience is and looks a little bit different. One of the key differences we see is that I can link my calendar right from this tile and the paid version. The basic version, if I wanna do that, I have to log into the web portal. I have to go into the web portal and we'll show you how to do that in several episodes where I can see extended settings where I can see my profile and under my profile. One of the things I can do is link my calendar, I can link it to a google calendar to an exchange calendar. If I have an on premises, exchange server, two officers 65 if I'm using exchange online through the cloud. But I have to do it from the web portal in the basic version, I have no shortcut no link to it right here. So keep that in mind one of the small and subtle but important differences. As I scroll over and scroll all the way up to the top, I can see this indicator right here of who I am, it's a little oval Like square that has my initials. I'm logged on as O365 guys, so it takes a truncation of those initials shortens them and puts two initials there to represent me. It also shows me my status, I'm currently available. That's the same in both versions, no difference there. I can modify that, and you will see when I log onto the paid account in just a moment. I've changed that and put a picture of myself there and I'm gonna show you how to do that in one of the upcoming episodes. But the other thing that's unusual, different, not the same between the paid and the basic version, is what we see when we go to settings. This icon right here, the gear shift or the gear icon rather right below, my representation of myself. When I click on that, opens up my settings pane here and I'll see me move out so you can see this I'll see all my settings are the same. You will see them when we look in, and view more settings down here by the way, this link. Is how we get into the web portal right from the basic version. If you don't really know the address that will take you to advance settings which is really just going to the portal. This is all the same. So we're going to see that. That's gonna look the same. What's different is when I click on my icon right above. When I click on that. This nice pop out menu here. And it does tell me visually immediately, hey your license for basic free. It gives me that limitation on the number of people in the meeting time. So I know that I have the ability to scroll down here. I can change my availability status. I can change my picture. There is a link to do that right from here if you want to and again I'll show you how to do that in an upcoming episode. I can also buy a license right from here. And if I do that, I'm taken to the web portal and invited to upgrade and buy a license and provide payment information if I am using the basic version. But what you'll notice here as I scroll up and just to remind you, I'm gonna scroll back and pay attention as I go up the list here. You'll notice nowhere does it say profile or my profile with a link to your profile. One of the key differences between the basic and the paid version is that you don't get a link directly to your profile. You don't get a link to change the calendar right here. You can do those things. But you have to log in using the settings and then view advanced settings option or go right to the portal. You have to do everything from the portal. Some of those things are available as links and available to you as shortcuts essentially in the paid version. You still have to go to the portal. Ultimately have to be on the website to make any significant changes to your settings. So that doesn't really change. But the links and the shortcuts are really what one of the key differences. So let's take a look at that. I'm going to log out. I'm going to go down here and sign out and I'm going to sign back in. But in this case as a paid user using a business account, my IT Pro t.v. Account. So I'm going to sign in this item at IT pro t.v. I'm gonna put in my password. Again just zooming in quickly to show you same options. Nothing's different. Keep signed in, don't keep signed in up to you. Sign in will give it just a moment. And the navigation looks the same in the sense that up top. I do still have those same four icons in my navigation area. My tools, those haven't changed my shortcut buttons on my home screen identical. Haven't changed my calendar lifestyle. The same hasn't changed. But notice what I told you that link that lets me add a calendar by essentially giving me a shortcut right back to the portal sitting there. Unlike in the free version or I can click here and when I do it takes me directly in and starts the process. For me, it's really just a shortcut. I can still do that from the basic version. I just have to go to the portal to do that. When I come over here and go all the way up again. Let's look at settings really quickly just to see my gear icon. The settings are the same. Nothing's different. Trust me that we don't go through all of them and meticulously detailed everyone they are the same. No difference view more settings. View the advanced settings right down there that linked to the portal. The same. Settings are the same. They don't vary. But you'll notice my indicator of presence in my little icon showing me is there. I've just added a picture of modified and I'll show you how to do that in an upcoming episode but that's there. But when I click on it, you'll notice it does say licensed that's going to be different. And as I go down here, I did tell you that we have an option that shows me a link to my profile and you can see sure enough that is there. That's really just to get a shortcut. Doesn't give me any additional functionality. Just gives me a shortcut back to the portal, which I'll click on and show you quickly. And we don't have the option to buy a license because of course we're already licensed. So we don't have to worry about that, all right? So let's do this. Let me just kind of bring us back out so you can see when I click on this, what's going to happen. Let's click on my profile. It brings up the landing page, log on page for the zoom portal where I can get to edit all my settings in this case my profile. But any other settings. I do have to log on as a user. So let me just highlight and do that real quick. Let me put in my password. And you'll notice that I have my picture there. That's where I went to add the picture by clicking edit. We'll take a look at how to do that later. And you'll notice I can scroll down and I can see by the way, just I didn't call your attention to it. Let me zoom in under personal I'm highlighting the profile and that's what we came to see. And I can see all my profile settings right here, all sorts of different things. I could see our capacity in terms of the meeting, limit were licensed at a business license so we have a higher capacity. My sign an email. I could see date and time, things like that. And if I scroll down, I could see the calendar integration right here. And the shortcut in the paid version just brings me here and kicks this process off. If you're looking at the basic version, the free version and you go ahead and you end, you come in rather excuse me, log onto the portal. And you want to do the calendar integration. You just come down here to your profile and you're able to click on this button and you're able to spin it up the same way it's just that you have to come look for it as opposed to being presented with the option as a shortcut. You begin by selecting a service and you're off to the races. Everything is good. You walk through whatever integration. You may want to whether it's Google as I mentioned, exchange or office 365, whatever it may be, all right? So those are the key differences that we see between the free, what's called the basic plan and one of the paid plans. Whether it's just the business, the enterprise of the professional, whichever one it is. I'll be back with a lot of additional episodes in this series on how to use zoom but until I am happy zooming. [MUSIC]