The Coronavirus Outbreak leaves a huge impact on the global economy but not in a great way. Home quarantine is being imposed mandatorily while most companies are diverting their operation through various communication apps. Zoom is probably one of the most in-demand apps on the mobile market today. This app allows you to communicate with your friends, family, and colleagues through a video conference. While there are many long-existing apps that offer the same feature, what really set Zoom apart from them is the fact that it offers its services for free. Now that “social distancing” is being strictly implemented worldwide, people find this simple video conferencing app extremely beneficial.

How to Use Zoom

One of the best features of Zoom is its overall simplicity. It comes with a simple and neat user interface that allows you to navigate and access its features with no ease. Zoom is available for both PC and mobile platforms and it comes with free and paid versions. Interestingly, the free version is already advantageous enough as it allows you to invite up to 100 people in one meeting. Right after you installed the app on your mobile, you will be asked to set up an account. This will ask for your name and your preferred login details. You can also input your colleagues’emails or contact numbers before it prompts you to the main page.

The simple interface comes with four accessible tabs; Meet & Chat, Meetings, Contacts, and Settings. The Meet & Chat tab is where the main interaction takes place. Here, you can set a New Meeting, join and existing or ongoing meeting, schedule a meeting or share a screen. Just tap the respective icons to proceed. The Meetings tab will display your Personal Meeting ID which plays a very crucial role in this app. You can start a meeting here or send an invitation to start a conference. This tab will also list down all the meetings you had in the past. The Contacts tab, on the other hand, allows you to add and search people as well as the channels you created. You can also configure the app through Settings tab and adjust the audio and video properties based on your own preferences

The Key Feature

Zoom’s main key feature is the video conference tool itself. Unlike other communicating apps like Skype or Hangouts, Zoom allows you to set a meeting and use its video conferencing feature to 100 participants. The paid version of the app raised the bar high up to thousands of participants in one meeting. Even if you are not using the Zoom’s paid version, you can still embrace the app’s best features to the full extent. To host a meeting, here’s what you need to do. Tap the “New Meeting” icon and adjust the sliders if you want to start the meeting with the video turned on or not and if you want to use your PMI (Personal Meeting ID). Tap the “Start a Meeting” button and it will prompt you to the video screen.

The lower panel will showcase various icons such as Mute, Stop Video, Share, Participants and more. You can invite participants in different ways. First, you can provide them your Personal Meeting ID as well as the Meeting password. You can also tap the Participants icon and Invite users through various platforms such as Facebook Messenger, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and through Zoom Contacts. During the video conference, you can also share files and documents through its chat system. You can send photos, documents, Dropbox links, Google Drive, and many others. You can end the meeting anytime by tapping the END button on the upper right corner of the screen.

To join an existing meeting, you can either tap the Join icon directly on the Zoom app or you can tap the link provided by the Meeting creator through your email or Messenger app. Participants have the option to turn their videos on or not. They can just listen to the conversation without interacting with other participants. You can turn the audio on while the video screen is off or you can both turn them off during the conference.

Verdict

Now that Work from Home system is strictly implemented due to the coronavirus outbreak, Zoom has become extremely beneficial. Interestingly, the app is not just applicable to businesses but also advantageous for families and relatives who are living apart from each other. It is indeed a great tool for social distancing. Function-wise, Zoom is extremely useful in many ways. Best of all, the app can be downloaded for free. The free version allows you to set a virtual conference to up to 100 participants. While Zoom may not be a perfect app and it has some notable flaws here and there, the developers are constantly making updates to improve their services and it has a huge potential. In addition to that, tt comes with a simple interface that everyone can easily navigate and explore. Currently, for mobile devices, Zoom is available for both Android and iOS and you can download this amazing communication app absolutely for free.

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