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Additional features for hosts

Additional features to help you manage your meeting room or make it more interactive. Please note that some features are turned off by default for privacy reasons or to minimize distractions in online lectures.

You can review and enable any feature or settings by visiting your Zoom's Settings page. (external link)  If you have any questions about a specific feature, please contact help@torontomu.ca.

Increase engagement

The polling feature allows you to create single choice or multiple choice polling questions during your meeting. Polls can also be conducted anonymously. 

Limitations

  • The meeting or webinar must be scheduled in advance.  
  • Only the original meeting host can edit or add polls during a meeting. If host control is transferred to another participant, the new host will not have polling ability.
  • Attendees must use the desktop application or the Zoom mobile app to participate in polls.

Breakout Rooms allow you to split your Zoom meeting into small groups automatically or manually. Breakout rooms mimic in-person small group discussions, seperate from the main meeting. Participants have full audio, video and screen sharing capabilities.

  • Each breakout room can have a maximum of 200 participants.
  • You can create up to 50 separate sessions/breakout rooms. Meetings with 200 participants may only have 30 breakout rooms, while meetings with fewer participants may have more.
  • If you already know how you want to split up your participants, you can pre-assign breakout rooms.
  • Breakout rooms can be populated with members of your D2L Brightspace course groups.
  • Note: Live transcription is currently not supported in breakout rooms.

The whiteboard is a great feature if you'd like to mimic the experience of drawing on a white board. 

How to access Whiteboard

  • Click the "Share Screen" button located in your meeting tool bar.
  • Click "Whiteboard"
  • Click "Share"

Meeting participants can annotate on a shared screen as a viewer or the one that started sharing your screen. Participants will be able to annotate the host's shared screen. To minimize distractions, this feature was disabled by default.

Opt-in to feature

  1. Go to your Zoom Settings page. (external link) 
  2. Navigate to Annotations and click on the toggle to enable.
    • Tip: Press Ctrl + F (or Command + F on MacOS) and search "Annotations" to quickly find the setting.

Note: You must logout of the Zoom Desktop Client and login to it again for this setting to take affect.

How to access Annotation tools

While viewing a shared screen, click "View Options", then "Annotate" at the top.

Screen sharing

By default, only meeting hosts can share their screen.

If you'd like a participant to share their screen, you can temporarily assign them as a co-host (giving them administrative access to the meeting), or you can enable screen sharing for all participants via the Security toolbar.

Add a participant or teaching assistant as a co-host

If you have a large meeting or class, you can assign a participant or teaching assistant to co-host the meeting. The co-host feature allows the host to share hosting privileges with another user, allowing the co-host to manage the administrative side of the meeting, such as managing participants or starting/stopping the recording.

Limitations

Co-hosts do not have access to the following controls as they are only available as host controls in a meeting:

  • Closed captioning
  • Start live streaming
  • End meeting for all participants
  • Make another participant a co-host
  • Start breakout rooms or move participants from one breakout room to another
  • Start waiting room (co-hosts can place participants in waiting room or admit/remove participants from the waiting room).
  • Co-hosts cannot start a meeting. 

To add a co-host

Navigate to the Meetings section of Zoom. (external link, opens in new window) 

If you are scheduling a future meeting, navigate to the Alternate Host field and enter the teaching assistants email. 

If the meeting is already scheduled, find the meeting you would like to add a co-host to. Click on the "Edit this meeting" button, and navigate to the Alternative Host field. Enter the teaching assistants email.

Virtual background

The "virtual background" allow users to replace their background with any selected image. Users can upload an image in the Zoom Desktop application settings.

Opt-in to feature

  1. Go to your Zoom Settings page. (external link) 
  2. Navigate to Virtual background and click on the toggle to enable.
    • Tip: Press Ctrl + F (or Command + F on MacOS) and search "Virtual background" to quickly find the setting.

Note: You must logout of the Zoom Desktop Client and login to it again for this setting to take affect.

How to enable on desktop application

  1. In a Zoom meeting click the "^" arrow next to "Start/Stop Video".
  2. Click "Choose a virtual background..."
    • If prompted, click "Download" to download the package for virtual background without a green screen. 

Virtual background tips

  • It's recommended that you position yourself in front of a wall with no objects in the background. 
  • Make sure there are minimal shadows and good lighting.

Cloud recordings

When you record a meeting and choose Record to the Cloud; the video, audio, and chat text are recorded in the Zoom cloud.

How to share recordings

Due to limited cloud storage, we ask that you download the files locally and delete it from the Zoom cloud, after the video and transcription has processed. We highly recommend uploading the Zoom recording to Google Drive instead. You can then share the Google Drive link by email or with D2L Brightspace. Learn how to share audio and video using Google Drive.

Toronto Metropolitan University has conducted the privacy impact assessment and security assessment on Zoom. Please review the recommendations from the assessments:

  1. Before you start using Zoom, please review Zoom’s Privacy Policy. (external link) 
  2. When you are going to record the meeting:

    1. you need to let the participants know the meeting is recorded prior or at the start of the meeting,
    2. you should not discuss sensitive topics as discussed in the privacy policy, and
    3. the host is responsible for the retention and deletion of the recordings in accordance with record retention schedule.


For questions about Zoom privacy, please email us at dmp@torontomu.ca and we will consult with the Privacy Office accordingly.

Meetings recorded to the Zoom Cloud are automatically transcribed. This can help accommodate students in the audience who may be D/deaf or hard-of-hearing, or more familiar with another language, respectively.