Training pointers for running virtual events

Here are some technical guidelines for people helping to run online events with Zoom, showing how to work around the major snags that I've seen us all running into.  The usual deficiency with training newer technicians only in "lecture format" using screenshares or static documents is that it's generally difficult to share live Zoom screens into another running Zoom meeting, so there are parts of the workflow that trainees rarely see until they have their own hands on the controls.  If that isn't until the live event and something unexpected happens and the host doesn't know how to handle it, that's basically a disaster and a failure on the part of the trainers.

This attempts to illustrate some of those states and what to avoid, albeit still using a still-image format.  At least it shows what the gotchas look like.  The only real way for trainees to learn the full workflow is to set them up to start and stop sessions as hosts, bring in secondary participants using a second computer or device, and play with all the knobs well in advance of the event.  Self-instruction meetings can easily be set up as recurring with no set schedule time, no waiting room, join-before-host enabled, and with simple passcodes.  Trainees can start these up any time they want just by connecting to the meeting ID, and use a member account's "host key" to claim host and then explore the in-session controls.  That's not the same as the sign-in password, and does not compromise the login itself.  But to provide the full soup-to-nuts experience, the sign-in passwords must eventually be divulged to the tech staff.  As a trainer and/or Zoom account manager, strike your own balance for what information to release and when.  You do need to be able to trust your run crew, after all.

Here are two views of what the main Zoom client window looks like, when it is signed in under member credentials.  The windows may look a little different for other operating systems and devices, and/or in what Zoom calls "landscape" view vs. "portrait" view.  The app has different sections, or "tabs" if you will. -- Home, Chat, Meetings, and Contacts.  The window on the left is in the "Home" section, accessible by clicking the icon under the pink arrow.  We don't want this section if we're looking to start a specific event session.  Never use the red "New Meeting" button -- that would launch some random meeting-ID that nobody else could possibly know about.  Rather, we want the "Meetings" section, which brings up a mini-schedule of the sessions set up under this member account, as shown on the right.  (In this compact view, buttons do not appear until you hover the mouse into the correct item box to make its buttons appear -- yes, hidden buttons are a stupid UX design decision by Zoom, and it pervades their stuff.)  *Here* is where we start our meeting/webinar from -- click the Start button for the correct item.

Here is Zoom's rationale for the behavior, which I finally got one of their support reps to admit to and detail via email.

Click your own icon/avatar at the way lower left of your Discord client, and then one of "online" or "invisible" to reflect your status.  Even if you stay in "online" mode, When you kill your Discord app or browser window you will "go dark" automatically and pop back on the next time you connect.  If you want to continue appearing "offline" and thus implicitly off-duty, just set yourself back to "grey" and it'll stay that way.