Managing meetings with rotating members

[KyleB]

We have weekly meetings with members that rotate every few months. I.e. One member rotates off and another rotates on. We'd also like anyone to be able to record in case not everyone can attend each meeting. Ideally, we'd also like the cloud recordings go to a centralized location and not the meeting organizer since the original organizer will eventually rotate off.

Our current approach is to have one member set up the meeting and include current members as co-hosts. Every rotation, we update the list of co-hosts. Once the original organizer rotates off, a current member creates a new meeting and the cycle starts again. (Side note: we've learned not to create the meetings with the Google Calendar plug-in because those meetings don't seem to show up in the Zoom control panel so we can't edit them.)

This approach is not bad but it means the recordings are scattered among different accounts. If possible, it would be nice to, for example, schedule all these meetings in a central account and simply update the list of co-hosts each rotation. But I understand a shared account is against the terms of service and I'm not sure if there are checks in place to ensure concurrent meetings can't happen on the same account (even if the account holder doesn't attend).

Is there a better way to manage this?

[Bort]

HI @KyleB 

This is certainly a complicated situation, but let's see if I can guide you in a direction that solves most of the issues. 

If it is possible for you account to create a generic user for hosting this meeting, that can still work without breaking Zoom's TOS. What you can do is create that generic user to be the host of the meeting, and just assign scheduling privilege between this user and all those who rotate through hosting. This would allow those rotating through the position to all be able to access and edit that meeting, start it on behalf of the host (scheduling privilege automatically grants you alt-host rights for that user's meetings as well), and access cloud recordings after the session. 

The only downside to this approach is that generic user profile must also be licensed, so that you can utilize scheduling privilege, so this approach may not be the best financially. That being said, if there was someone on your account that doesn't schedule meetings for themselves (perhaps someone in Billing that only needs access to invoices), that account could serve double-duty. They can still access Billing info, while others utilize the meeting functionality. 

Hope that helps, but let me know if you have any further questions. 

[KyleB]

Thanks @Bort. That might work for us. As a follow up, we have 9 or 10 of these types of meetings spread throughout the company. I.e. we have 9 or 10 groups of people that hold regular Zoom meetings, potentially concurrently. People rotate in and out of these groups roughly every six months. If we use a single user profile to create each of these meetings, will there be any issues if some of the meetings overlap? I'm hoping not since the user profile that created them won't actually "attend" any of the meetings.

[Bort]

Hi @KyleB 

Unless you are on a Business account, each user is limited to hosting just one meeting at the same time. So, this generic user could not host every one of these meetings if there will be any overlap, even if that user does not actually attend. 

If you go this route, I'd suggest saving these meetings as calendar events to a dedicated calendar that is shared with everyone at the company. This would allow you all to track when a meeting is scheduled and when that account is free to use. 

[KyleB]

Hi @Bort 

We're actually on the Zoom One Business plan. Based on this article, it sounds like this would allow a host to have two concurrent meetings regardless of whether that user joined. If so, that would probably work for us as I don't think there's more overlap than that.

Thanks for the info!

[Bort]

Great, that is the correct information from the correct article. So yeah, as long as that generic user is not hosting 3 or more meetings at the same time, this should work for you on your account. Based on my experience, the hard part is creating that process and educating others on how to use it properly, so best of luck! 

Let me know if you have any further issues or questions!