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  • How Can I Schedule a Meeting in Zoom?

How Can I Schedule a Meeting in Zoom?

August 9, 2021 / Dave Taylor / Zoom, Skype & Video Chat Help / No Comments

I need to schedule some meetings with colleagues through Zoom and am wondering if there are any shortcuts to make the process quick?

Over the last few years, the Zoom teleconferencing program has evolved at a remarkable pace, from security improvements to entirely new features and functions. One area that’s remained a bit lacking, however, is scheduling meetings. It’s not that you can’t schedule meetings easily enough, is that it’s on you, the meeting organizer, to send out the invitations. Every other meeting tool out there, from Skype to Google Hangout, can email other attendees, but for some reason Zoom still hasn’t implemented that functionality. Okay, so it’s a matter of copy and paste, but still, why not just implement it?

Okay, I own it, that’s kind of a “first world problem” so let’s just get into it. In this article, I’ll show you how to schedule and create a meeting for your own Zoom calendar, then share that meeting link with friends, family, and colleagues through email, text message, even Facebook Messenger. Ready? Let’s do this!

HOW TO SCHEDULE A MEETING IN ZOOM

You’ve probably started up Zoom hundreds of times, but do you actually look at the four buttons on the main window? Mahy people don’t, and it does, of course, require that you have an account and are logged in. Don’t worry, there are free accounts. Sign in and this is what you’ll see when you start up Zoom:

zoom schedule meeting - main zoom window

Since most of us just click on Zoom links to join meetings, plenty of people really do just, uhhh, “zoom” past this screen entirely. 🙂

This time you want to click on the “Schedule” button on the lower left. Do so.

zoom schedule meeting - schedule a meeting in zoom main window

As you can see, there’s a lot of optional configuration you can change to make the meeting work perfectly for you. You’ll want to give it a good name and specify the time and date (we’ll come back to that in a moment), then there are a bunch of choices:

Meeting ID – You already have a personal meeting ID that you can use, but by default, Zoom generates a unique ID for each meeting. This is more secure and is probably what you should choose.

Security – I’ve never had an issue across hundreds of Zoom meetings, but you can specify a passcode (or use the default random passcode) and enable or disable the waiting room. If you ever have random folk – or bots! – showing up in your meeting, the Waiting Room can stop ’em cold.

Video – Set whether your video – and that of the other participants – is on or off by default. Yes, per meeting. Neat, eh?

Calendar – Choose the type of calendar you have. “iCal” is the horribly outdated name for Apple’s “Calendar” program on Mac and iOS, if you’re curious.

Lots to consider, but probably the defaults are fine for most meetings and digital tete-a-tetes.

zoom schedule meeting - schedule date time

Since it’s likely going straight into your calendar, take the time to specify the exact date and start + ending time.

Then there are the Advanced Options:

zoom schedule meeting - advanced options

Probably you don’t need to mess with any of these, but depending on your meeting, they can be useful. Perhaps the most useful of them all is “Automatically record meeting on the local computer“. Very helpful with business meetings!

A click on “Save” and you’ve created your Zoom meeting. Well done.

Since I’ve specified I use the Apple Calendar program (again, not iCal, sorry Zoom), it hands off a meeting schedule event to the Calendar program, which promptly pops up this confirmation:

zoom schedule meeting - calendar event

Great. Now it’s on my calendar. In fact, in Zoom, click on ‘Schedule” along the top and it’ll show you all your upcoming events, including the meeting just specified:

zoom schedule meeting - event on calendar

A click on the meeting – now called “Catch up Convo – Lisa & Dave” and it’ll show me more information and offer up some link options for sharing.

That looks like this:

zoom schedule meeting - sharing links

So at this point I’m all good and it’s on my calendar, but how do I share it with Lisa?

HOW TO SHARE SCHEDULED ZOOM EVENTS WITH OTHERS

You can choose “Copy Invitation” which includes information on various ways to connect, dial-in numbers and more. You can also “Show Meeting Invitation”, which turns that invite into an email (so yeah, I was wrong earlier, but why isn’t this part of the actual meeting scheduling task?). Since I’m busy chatting with Lisa through Facebook Messenger, I’ll just click on “Copy Invitation”.

This will flash on the screen for a moment or two:

zoom schedule meeting - link copied to clipboard

Great. Now I can just paste this into Messenger, knowing it’ll have everything she needs:

zoom schedule meeting - shared meeting info invitation

If you’re sending a text message or email, remember that you can paste this then delete everything except the actual Zoom link in the middle. Not too difficult, but, again, it could be simplified even further to help make people’s lives easier. Note that there’s no “add to calendar” for the invited guests either… In any case, that’s how it’s done, and now you know how to create Zoom calendar events and share them with others!

Pro Tip: I’ve been writing about how to get things done online forever. Please check out my extensive Zoom help area while you’re here! I promise it’ll help make you more productive with this useful tool.

About the Author: Dave Taylor has been involved with the online world since the early days of the Internet. Author of over 20 technical books, he runs the popular AskDaveTaylor.com tech help site. You can also find his gadget reviews on YouTube and chat with him on Twitter as @DaveTaylor.

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Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!
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