Zoom Meetings & Chat

Opmerkingen: My experience with this software has been reliable when excluding certain behaviors, such as moving Zoom windows around when recording or using the annotation tool. I haven't got the chance to use frequently this software on other devices, but I have mixed feelings when using it on a Linux system because of the aforementioned issues. I find Zoom is a solid option for one-on-one meetings, particularly considering everything needed works perfectly on a free plan. For bigger meetings, a Premium plan is a must and one can still benefit a lot from this software. It has enabled me to do screen sharing very easily without having to know anything about video recording or editing. Even on low-end PCs, I feel that Zoom is quite capable of rendering a good enough video for formal meetings that need to be shared later by other means. The encoding used for exported videos is a great compromise between size and quality, making it a viable option when it comes to sharing a meeting online. I wouldn't recommend Zoom for producing high-quality videos intended for commercial use or for presentations with a large audience (above 100 participants), but it works perfectly fine for personal projects and for most business meetings. I find I could benefit more if I were able to use all the available features as one often needs to rely on workarounds such as using an image editing tool to make drawings from screenshots instead of being able to directly work on the screen as intended by the software.

Pluspunten: Zoom brings to the table premium features for free. One-on-one meetings are not time-limited or missing any essential option. It is possible to set up recurring meetings by generating a permanent Zoom link, which is very useful to have custom links for many different contacts. Zoom makes it possible to share the screen with others: either to record a solo session; screen share with others in a meeting while having the ability to record audio and video; share only a specific window or the entire desktop and there's also a quick way to switch between different screens from participants, all of it being configurable in the application. Scheduling a new meeting is straightforward and numerous options are presented to make it easy to obtain the desired behavior by default when launching a meeting. Meetings can also be integrated with external calendars and provide more advanced options to facilitate interactions when the meeting starts, such as automatically recording on the local computer and asking for a password to prevent unauthorized access. Being able to chat with attendees and store all relevant information about them in an address book inside Zoom are other features that make interactions with frequent users a breeze. There are plenty of settings available from the main window to adjust audio, video and recording details and even integration with dual monitors.

Minpunten: Technical issues are present with the Linux desktop application in certain hardware conditions, especially with the annotation tool, rendering it totally useless. While using that tool, the screen isn't updated in real-time and won't allow displaying drawings with a transparent background to make it possible to annotate on the screen while keeping the desktop visible in the background. There are also various notable glitches when moving Zoom windows around, such as the video window being duplicated when recording and staying on the screen for extended periods of time, ruining the quality of any recording being made. Because of those shortcomings, it is impractical to try and move the windows when recording and some features simply need to be forgotten at those times. It is also inconvenient that the toolbar won't display properly when set at the bottom of the screen, as it only opens from top to bottom, making the list of tools go outside the bottom part of the screen and effectively unreachable. There is no way to resize the toolbar which occupies too much space on tiny monitors (screen size of 13 inches and below). In a similar fashion, the main window when a meeting is happening can't easily be resized as some buttons will disappear and become unusable, making it harder to record the session or end the meeting.

Pluspunten: Affordable. Reliable. Easy. That’s Zoom in a nutshell. We have experienced the heartache of running a webinar only to have the audio cut in and out and glitch the entire time – ultimately causing our attendees to drop off. But, that’s not the case with Zoom. Our company, belonging to the industry of software QA and testing, regularly hosts remote meetings to check in and collaborate on progress and future team initiatives. We decided to make the switch from GoToMeeting (a great alternative to Zoom) because it fit our needs more accurately. Zooms customer support is remarkably responsive and very quick to solve any issues encountered. Pros
Zoom video conference calling and webinar is fitting for any sized company or organization. Meetings can be scheduled within seconds and added directly from Zoom’s platform to Google Calendar, Yahoo Calendar, or Outlook Calendar; which allows you to set up invites and add additional attendees. Zoom provides the option to either enroll in a monthly or an annual plan, in which you can choose to deactivate and/or reactivate at any time (beneficial for saving extra bucks if you do not run regular monthly webinars). The plan that includes 100 participants, for both video conferencing and webinar, are priced at an affordable price per month (GoToWebinar is nearly double in price for the same plan). The audio on calls and webinars comes across crisp; we have never experienced any issues with dropped calls or glitches during webinars). Having the ability to join calls and webinars from any desktop, tablet, and/or phone (iOS and android) is convenient for anyone looking to access meetings on the go. Zoom includes various features, i.e. live screen-sharing, whiteboard, etc., which helps relieve the difficulties of working remotely. If you are holding an international meeting, I.e. training, trainees can join by laptop and listen over laptop speakers (they would have to use laptop and not call in directly via phone to avoid having to pay for extra international call credits – which costs an additional /month).
Zoom comes in handy when working with distributed teams; Zoom’s conference calling features are great for doing demos, exercises, sprint planning, etc.

Minpunten: When joining a webinar or a call via mobile device, it’s unclear how to join audio (I thought there was something wrong with my phone because it was telling me my audio was on but I could not hear anything during the webinar – turns out I couldn’t see the audio number which was hidden behind the webinar). If anyone else has this confusion you can also look at the original webinar confirmation or follow-up reminder and locate the call-in number there. The poll questions and results to not display in the webinar recordings so you will have to edit or takes screenshots and merge them into your recording (we use I movie to do this).