Benefits of Using Contacts

Zoom is overall a relatively user-friendly application for setting up and joining online video meetings. However, utilizing its built-in Contacts feature can help simplify certain tasks regarding meeting invites and communication outside of live meetings.

An Alternative Method to Invite Participants

The biggest advantage to using contacts is the added simplicity of inviting participants to your meetings. Normally, many users will invite people using a Meeting ID and Password, or a Meeting URL, which they will send to invitees by email. Invitees will then have to ensure that they have received the correct information and join the meeting at the appropriate time. For one-on-one meetings or for inviting non-Zoom users, this method works adequately. However, for cases such as large classroom groups, the email method could be tedious and prone to errors such as email address typos. With a little proactive preparation, developing a Contacts list will allow you to directly invite these participants in-meeting with a simple click, without the need of playing Meeting ID/Password hot potato.

When in an active meeting, navigate to the Participants menu along the bottom navigation bar. This applies to both desktop and mobile versions of the app (you may have to tap your screen once to get the navigation bar to appear on mobile versions).

When opening the Participants option, Zoom will open a Participants list (along the right of the Zoom window for desktop apps, a new screen for phones and tablets). You can select the Invite option to bring up your contacts list and select all the participants from the list that you wish to invite directly. In most cases, direct invites will not require a Meeting ID or Password as they are already secure.

Zoom's Built-in Chat

The Contacts feature also allows for direct messaging within Zoom, through its built-in Chat feature. This is useful for confirming meeting times with your contacts, regardless if they are online or offline (if they are offline, they will receive the message upon logging in), or for sharing lesson materials such as worksheets or learning resources. Your chat history with your contacts is also timestamped and saved, making it easy to backtrack to messages related to certain lesson days.