5 Ways To Stop Zoom Bingo

How long does it take you to tick the boxes on your Zoom bingo sheet in a call, meeting or interview?

Too often the meeting turns in to a mini IT lesson and vital time is lost whilst people get Zoom ready.

Here are some hints and tips for you to get yourself Zoom ready at the start of your Zoom meeting.

Follow these tips and don’t let people be ticking you off on their Zoom Bingo sheet.

1 - Can You Hear Me?

One of the first questions everyone shouts when they first log on to the meeting is “Can you hear me” followed with a round of “Yes” or “You’re still on mute” (See point 3) and then they tick the box on their bingo sheet.

The solution is to do a double check before you log on to the meeting when you are in the waiting room.

Click on Test Computer Audio this then gives you a screen where you can test what you can hear by clicking on the test speaker button and see if you can hear the ringing noise and then the test microphone button where you can speak some words and then the computer plays it back to you.

If you can hear the noise and your own voice you are good to join the meeting, though you may still need to unmute yourself when you arrive.

2 - Can You See Me?

Once you are in the meet go down to the bottom left hand corner of your PC to the picture of a film camera that has a red line across it and double click on it and this will open up your screen for people to see you.

3 - Your On Mute!

There are 2 ways you can save yourself from hearing this phrase.

First, at the bottom left of your PC screen next to the camera icon there is a microphone with a red line through it, click on there and people will then be able to hear you.

The second way involves pressing a couple of keys at the same time. If you press Alt + A you can mute and unmute yourself to your heart’s content.

If you are the host you can use Alt + M to mute/unmute everyone.

4 - Who Is Ipad 796?

This one drives me mad when I am trying to note take and the screen is full of people who called “Ipad 675” or “Galaxy J6” and women labelled “Richard’s PC” and “Kevin’s iPhone.”

To solve this, click on your picture on the 3 little dots at the top right corner and select rename.

If you just want to change your name for the current meeting make sure you untick the box that says “Keep name for future calls”. I didn’t, I was playing a murder mystery game with friends and changed my name to the character “Rev Adam Brethren” and did not untick the box so when I logged on to a network meeting the next day I was still the Rev Adam lol!

5 - Sorry Go Ahead!

Another annoying one when everyone talks at the same time or 2 people try to talk and usually it is the quieter person who will say “Sorry Go Ahead” which leads to the meeting loudmouth taking over the meeting and boring everyone to death.

The way round it is for the Zoom Master to set the protocol at the start of the meeting. A couple of ways you can do are to get people to raise their hand if they want to speak or have the Zoom Master go round each person in turn and ask them for comments.

One thing to point out if you do it this way is that if people lose connection they come back in a different order on your screen so you could miss people or give them double opportunities to speak.