The Virtual Background feature allows you to display an image or video as your background during a Zoom meeting, which can provide you with more privacy or a consistent and professional look for a presentation. Depending on the device you are joining the meeting with, you can use the Virtual Background feature with or without the use of a green screen behind you, with the system requirements being higher for virtual background without a green screen.

How to turn on your video and add a virtual background

DESKTOP

• If the host has requested video be on by default, you will be prompted with a video preview. This allows you to see your current video and decide to join the meeting with or without video. Click Join with Video.
• While you’re in a meeting, click Start Video / Stop Video in the bottom-left corner of the meeting controls toolbar as needed to control your video.
• (Optional) Next to Start Video / Stop Video, click the up arrow icon 🔼 to change any of your video settings, such as picking a different camera or choosing a virtual background. If you select a new background, it will automatically change in the meeting.

MOBILE

• If the host has requested video be on by default, you will be prompted with a video preview. This allows you to see your current video and decide to join the meeting with or without video. Click Join with Video.
• While you’re in a meeting, click Start Video / Stop Video in the bottom-left corner of the meeting controls toolbar as needed to control your video.
• (Optional) Next to Start Video / Stop Video, click the up arrow icon 🔼

   

   to change any of your video settings, such as picking a different camera or choosing a virtual background. If you select a new background, it will automatically change in the meeting.

Reference Article : https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/210707503-Changing-your-Virtual-Background-image

I'm guilty. 

Guilty of making a bad assumption.  Based on the large number of posts in the Zoom Community about "I paid for a Pro account but I'm still not Licensed and my meetings get cut off at 40 minutes," I had made the assumption that Zoom does not automatically assign a newly-purchased Pro license to the owner and sole user on an account.

Yesterday, while recording some screen captures for an upcoming video I'm creating, I discovered -- much to my surprise -- that the account I purchased while recording did in fact get assigned to the owner and only user on the account.

And yet, the "New license not assigned" posts continue to come in!

The question I'm now researching is, "Under what conditions does Zoom do the automatic license assignment, and when does it not do the license assignment?"  I've done a quick review of the latest posts, and one or more of these situations seem to be present in many of them:

1. The user previously had a Pro account, which lapsed, was cancelled, or otherwise interrupted, and the user has renewed their license subscription.
2. The user has been on a Basic account for a very long time -- perhaps years -- and has recently decided to move to a Pro account.

In some cases, it appears that there is indeed a glitch in the application or recognition of the License that can only be fixed on the back end by Zoom Support.

I've developed a macro to provide this information to most posts with these issues:

(Don't know what a macro is on your Community profile?  You're missing out!)

You need to assign your newly purchased license to your user account. See this web page for assistance:

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115004976063-Assigning-a-License

Follow these steps taken from the article:

1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal at https://zoom.us.
2. Click User Management, then Users.
3. Locate or search for the user who you want to assign a license. There will likely only be your single account – click your account
4. Click Edit at the end of the user row. This will open a window.
5. Choose the User Type to assign, selecting Licensed.
6. After choosing the User Type, use the drop down to select the license. There should be an indication that you have 1 available user license if you have indeed purchased one or more new licenses. Click the available license.
7. (Optional) Assign add-ons can be included by checking the boxes for the add-on. You will not likely have any add-ons, so you might skip this step.
8. Click Save.

The license is now applied to your user account and you can use it immediately.

If this does not fix your issue, please submit a support ticket to our Billing team here and they will be able to assist you.

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=360000983032

If you have any insight or opinions on why these situations of "New license not assigned" continue to occur, I'd like to know!  Maybe the automatic assignment process can be tweaked to reduce the number of posts with this issue.

¿Sabías que Zoom tiene su propio Centro de Aprendizaje y que es GRATUITO? ¡Pues, cómo lo oyes! En nuestro Centro de Aprendizaje (ZLC, por sus siglas en inglés) podrás encontrar cursos actualizados de todos los productos de Zoom, no tienes más que suscribirte a los cursos que te interesan y completarlos a tu ritmo. Al final del curso obtendrás un certificado digital confirmando que has superado el curso con éxito. Si tienes un equipo a tu cargo o te encargas de las capacitaciones de los miembros de tu empresa, esta es una manera sencilla de tener a toda la plantilla que usa los productos de Zoom bien entrenada. 

He trabajado en el pasado con un par de organizaciones de carácter internacional, con oficinas tanto en América del norte como del sur, mediante nuestro Centro de Aprendizaje han conseguido superar barreras lingüísticas y logísticas que hubiesen supuesto un gran reto para los equipos de RR.HH de ambos continentes. ¡Y todo esto ofrecido por Zoom de manera gratuita!

Os animo a echarle un vistazo y compartir con nosotros vuestra experiencia. Os dejo un vistazo rápido al nuevo sistema de selección de catálogos para diferentes idiomas:

¿Preparado para tu próxima aventura en Zoom? ¿Qué curso vas a elegir en el Centro de Aprendizaje de Zoom?

 ¡Un saludo Zoomeros!

—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Did you know that Zoom has its own Learning Center and that it is completely free? Well now you do! In our Zoom Learning Center (ZLC) you will find updated training courses for all our products. You only have to subscribe to the courses that are more appealing to you and complete them at your own pace. At the end of the training you will receive a digital certificate showing successful completion of the course. If you are managing a team or you are in charge of your organization's training, this is an easy way to have all your staff well trained and up to speed on Zoom’s products.

In the past I have had the luck to work with several organizations that have offices both in North and South America, through our Zoom Learning Center they managed to overcome language and logistic obstacles thus saving substantial time as well as expenses to their HR team. And all this thanks to our free to use Zoom Learning Center!

I highly encourage you to check it out and share with us your experience. Also, check out the new fast language catalog access functionality:

Ready for your next learning adventure with Zoom? What course will you choose next in the Zoom Learning Center?

Happy Zooming!

Hi,

I am new to Zoom and have a question I am hoping someone can help me answer!? 🙂

I am working for a school that uses Zoom for some of its digital classes. In this case we would like to have pre-assigned set groups for every week, but in the beginning of the class we also want the option to have randomly selected groups in the breakout rooms. Is there a way where you can use both these functions? If yes - how?

Also, is it possible to share and save documents  in the "set group" breakout rooms? 

Thank you so much in advance,

Carolina

Zoom IQ enables you to enhance productivity, shorten deal cycles, and improve revenue predictability with actionable insights directly from your Zoom Meetings and Zoom Phone customer interactions.

Here are some of the reasons people love Zoom IQ:

Sales and Revenue Leaders

Provide actionable feedback
Reduce anecdotal feedback and quickly identify areas for improvement using post-meeting analysis that includes transcription highlights as well as sentiment and engagement scores.

Understand sales deals better
View sales deals by stage, size, teams, opportunity name, and use analytics for the number of interactions, competition, and customer sentiments to identify sales improvements.

Forecast more accurately
Digestible, aggregated insights integrated into your CRM give context on your sales funnel, highlight deals that need attention, and identify pipeline trends.

Stay on top of the critical moments in your business
Track words and expressions across customer conversations and get proactive alerts that help assess opportunity health, gather competitor intelligence, or help ensure products are effectively positioned.

Sellers

Cut the noise, focus on selling
Reduce the burden of tasks like note-taking, adding information to the CRM, or capturing the next steps and spending more of time connecting with customers.

Get better faster
Review meetings and calls faster and get better continuously with insights such as talk-listen ratio, talking speed, sentiment analysis, and more.

Eliminate customer knowledge gaps
Leverage an easy-to-search source of truth in all your customer conversations that simplifies preparing for sales calls, onboarding accounts, and collaborating across the revenue team.

Marketing and Sales Enablement

Replicate best practices and onboard sellers faster
Showcase sales best practices with curated playlists of recording snippets to get new sellers up to speed faster and provide more impactful training.

Evaluate your marketing messages faster
Give your marketing teams access to your sales calls to understand which messages are working and which are not.

Improve your competitive strategy
See which competitors are mentioned the most, why you’re winning or losing against them, and what sentiments are commonly associated with them.

Learn more about Zoom IQ here!

One of our Senior CSMs here at Zoom, Nikki Phillips led a wonderful Professional Development/Continuing Education course for one of her top K12 customers today! She partnered with our talented Zoom Rooms specialist @lanceford-zoom as well. Lance Ford demonstrated our awesome Zoom Whiteboard collaboration tool as well!! Reach out to your CSM or CS Advisory team if you would like to have a presentation done for your team!  

With so many different channels for communication, different business needs, and physical distance as a barrier, how can you best support a hybrid workforce?

During our Hear from a Peer webinar, we sat down with Lawrence Morrisson, head of IT at The Motley Fool, an organization dedicated to helping the world become smarter, happier, and richer through sound investment advice. He shared how their teams have managed to develop a robust and thriving hybrid work culture. Here are some key insights from our conversation.

How have your collaboration and communication needs evolved over the last decade?

In the beginning, it was like the Wild West. We were mostly an in-office culture back then, with open floor plan — no offices, not even for the CEO — with many conference rooms for meetings.

People would use whatever technology was most familiar to them, or whatever the team on the other side of the call was used to. Because of that we had all different connection options, and so we were trying to do screen sharing across those four or five different technologies with dongles that you would plug in, and it was a real headache. With the global presence that we have, it was clear that wasn’t going to scale.

We had to go with something simple and consistent. That’s when we found Zoom in the marketplace. So we tried it and we loved it.

How are your employees embracing this remote culture today?

We’ve committed to our employees that they can choose to go fully remote and are not required back in the office. And most employees have embraced that. It surprised us that we didn’t really skip a beat, productivity-wise. But it was a challenge to make sure we retained the special sauce of our culture that makes The Motley Fool such a rewarding place to work.

Our People Experience Team is focused on ensuring that Fools are building connections outside of their day-to-day work. Part of that is having social outlets and opportunities to learn, both professionally and personally. We’ve offered dozens of classes like gardening, beatboxing, bartending, active listening, and sushi making. We’ve also done events like virtual trick or treating on Halloween, pub trivia, escape rooms, meditation, and more.

As a result, more than 70% of our employees have participated in at least one “extracurricular” event in the last year. We find that when you’ve built a connection with another, even if it’s while doing a water tasting class (yes, seriously), you’re more likely to trust one another and collaborate successfully.

How are you using Zoom to support diversity, equity, and inclusion?

One of our guiding principles is test, learn, and iterate. Our People Experience Team has been tirelessly creative in providing a variety of remote experiences, enabled because of Zoom. We know not every Fool has the same interests, so it’s key to always try new things.

We know diverse teams make for stronger teams and better decision-making. We have ERGs (employee resource groups) set up to provide opportunities for like-minded Fools to share cultural moments and develop professional skills together all made available to everyone through Zoom.

What best practices or tips would you like to share with your peers?

Staying flexible is key — what we think we know today is almost certainly going to be different tomorrow. It’s going to change. Don’t get locked into a particular strategy. For example, we put all the various technical pieces in place that we needed to support a return to the office after COVID, and then we found that we were not getting the attendance that we thought we would. [So we gave] employees choice, flexibility, and trust.

There’s a very common misconception that people are going to be less productive if they’re not in the office, and I think that’s quite the opposite. So trust your people to get the job done.

If a colleague or industry peer with similar needs is evaluating Zoom, what would you tell them?

I really enjoy using Zoom — it’s very intuitive. It’s very flexible. If you’re going to go with Zoom, I would certainly recommend doing it across the board as we did.

I would also recommend doing a lot of communications leading up to your switch. We had a bunch of material prepared, as well as FAQs and best practices that we used to help our employees. We had a little graphic in the background of our conference room screens that asked participants if they wanted to share their screen. We also provided a link at the bottom that directed users to our in-house repository of documentation that we built out specifically to help everyone get onboarded with the product.

To learn more about how The Motley Fool is using Zoom to empower its hybrid workforce and reinforce its culture, check out the customer story.

Original story posted in Zoom Blog.