Take Control of Zoom Essentials

Get started with Zoom basics
Version 1.0.1, updated 9/3/2020

Zoom became the online tool that everyone suddenly needed to master for school, work, and social life. This free Take Control book is here to help. Take Control of Zoom Essentials gets you quickly up to speed, including installing a Zoom app or using Zoom in a browser if you haven't yet done so. It takes you through setup of your hardware, physical space, and Zoom apps, and teaches you to be an effective participant in meetings, including sharing your screen. This short, free book will make you an intermediate Zoom user in hours, without frustration.

You may have spent your life blissfully unaware of and not needing videoconferencing software. Then the pandemic hit, and all you heard was Zoom, Zoom, Zoom! The easy-to-use service isn't always as simple as it appears. We want to help during this difficult time with a free book that will help you master all the basics of Zoom while keeping all the hair you may still have this late in 2020.

Take Control of Zoom Essentials focuses on getting you quickly up to speed, even if you've already used Zoom before and felt like you didn't know enough about being an effective participant in a meeting or reliably joining meetings. It starts with software choices, explaining the differences between native Zoom apps for major platforms and browser-based web apps.

This look at essentials then proceeds rapidly through important topics, like improving your audio and video, setting up yourself and the space around you to put your best foot forward in meetings, and how to connect to a meeting.

You also learn the various ways to view other participants and the host (there are several), share your screen to make presentations or demonstrate an app, and the best ways to interact and stay safe in meetings.

This free book will help you feel like you're in firm control of Zoom, before and during meetings. For additional insight and help into all the topics covered in this essentials book, get a copy of the in-depth Take Control of Zoom, which dives in much further on setting up Zoom, working around roadmaps, using Keynote and PowerPoint in presentations, virtual cameras for presentations and mixing streams of media, and how to host and manage meetings. Where Essentials takes you to an intermediate user, Take Control of Zoom can make you an advanced participant and knowledgeable meeting host.

Here’s what you will find in Take Control of Zoom Essentials:

• Pick the right Zoom app
• Determine what audio and video changes you need
• Set up your workspace and surroundings
• Make yourself appear well lit and well distinguished on camera
• Learn all the ways to join a meeting and what to expect
• Manage Zoom's many options for viewing people in a meeting
• Understand how to participate in a meeting
• Control how you view a shared screen from someone else and share your own screen for presentations and demos
• Stay safe in Zoom