Configuring a Zoom meeting room for the team

At the time of this writing, Zoom is definitely our preferred choice when it comes to videoconferencing. It’s been our choice for the last two years or so. Something that works very well for every team/project is to configure a Zoom room that is permanently open so that any team member may pop up at anytime and find the others.

We practice pair programming and mob programming most of the time and we are fully remote, thus having a common place to meet is very handy. It’s the closest thing to having a meeting room in the office. Now, when it comes to configuring the room to keep it always open, it could be a bit tricky. It has to be done through Zoom’s web, not the actual desktop app. At the time of this writing, there are several pages that require adjustments in order to make the room always available.

Step 1: Sign in to your Zoom account via zoom.us.

Step 2: At the left hand side click on “Meetings” and then on the right hand side click on “Personal Room” tab and then on the “Edit” button.

Step 3: Uncheck the “Waiting Room” option, check “Allow participants to join anytime” and click “Save”

Step 4: Go to “Settings” menu item - on the left hand side of the page.

Step 5: Enable the following options:

• Allow participants to join before host
• Who can share? - Set it to “All Participants”.
• Who can start sharing when someone else is sharing? - Set it to “All Participants”
• Breakout room - Extremely cool and useful to break the room into smaller rooms.

Step 6: Disable the following Email Notification options (you don’t want these emails):

• When attendees join meeting before host
• When a meeting is cancelled

The URL of the room can be found at “Profile” and then “Personal Meeting ID”. It should be something similar to this:

https://zoom.us/j/8362863625?pwd=S2X4ZABvT1F4Vm80U1ZFz01WbHJEyT09

Caution: Notice that the password is within the URL. Anyone with this link is now able to enter the room. Do not publish the URL on the Internet if you don’t want strangers to get in, keep it just for the team. We usually pin the url on the team’s Slack channel.