Managing the Zoom service

If you’re the meeting host for a Sunday service, follow these guidelines:

Starting the meeting

  1. Go to zoom.us and log in with the church account details.
  2. Go to Meetings and start the St Alban’s Sunday Service meeting.

Before you let people into the meeting

Set mute options

Tap Participants.

Mute All participants and uncheck the option to Allow participants to unmute themselves. 

Set security options

Tap Security.

Make sure these settings are set: 

Lock Meeting: Off

Enable Waiting Room: On

Allow participants to: 

Share Screen: Off

Chat: On

Rename Themselves: Off 

Set chat options

Tap Chat.

Tap the … button in the chat window.

Set Participant can chat with: Host Only 

Before the service starts

Allow people into the meeting

For unknown people, monitor their video feed briefly to make sure they’re legitimate participants.

When the service starts

Start recording

Tap Record. Choose Record to the Cloud.

During the service

Unmute, then Spotlight the speaker

When changing speaker, unmute them first, and then Spotlight them.

(The order of this is important. If you do Spotlight first, the person will have to manually unmute themselves. If you unmute them first, they don’t need to do anything.)

To Spotlight someone, tap on the … on someone in the gallery view, or More on their name in the participants list and choose Spotlight.


What is the Spotlight?

Putting the Spotlight on someone makes their video feed become the main feed that others see.

Useful to know: When anyone shares their screen, the miniature video next to the screen share will contain the video from whoever is in the Spotlight.

Example use: When a host or co-host is sharing slides for the service from their screen, the church camera must be in the Spotlight to play next to the screenshare. Otherwise the host’s video will be next to the screenshare instead.

When sharing your screen

Share just the window you want to share, not your whole screen.

Exit the screenshare as soon as it’s not needed. Otherwise the main video feed will stay minimised.

If you’re playing a video, when you start the screenshare, choose the options to Share computer sound and Optimize Screen Share for Video Clip.

What is the Spotlight?

Putting the Spotlight on someone makes their video feed become the main feed that others see.

Multiple monitors: Screensharing works best when you have two monitors. Then you can control Zoom on one monitor, and control whatever you’re sharing.

Lock the meeting if necessary

If for any reason you think the meeting is attracting spam attendees, you can lock the meeting.

Breakout rooms

Set 3–4 participants per room

Tap Breakout Rooms.

Choose to Automatically assign people to breakout rooms.

Set the number of breakout rooms to have 3–4 people per room.

Tap Create Breakout Rooms.

Let people chat for about 15 minutes

Broadcast a message to all rooms when there’s only a few minutes left.

When time is reached, close the breakout rooms.