Best Practices for Invitations

General Best Practices

Know your audience

Be intentional when inviting people to Zoom meetings or lectures. You can invite users using UiO email, the Exchange calendar, links in Canvas, or other UiO internal communication methods. Using internal communication helps you identify and manage the participants. Avoid sharing links publicly, e.g. on social media, if you want to know who is attending your meeting or lecture. Be advised that the link may contain the password as well.

Manage screen sharing

The default setting for screen sharing at UiO is host-only. Do not change this on a global level, you still have the flexibility to change this in-meeting in the Security tab.

Use password protection or waiting room

Even if a meeting is internal and the link is not publicly available, is it advised to protect the meeting with either a password and/or by enabling the waiting room feature.

Customize your meeting settings

Some settings can be changed in-meeting, while others must be configured when scheduling a meeting. Be mindful of settings that affect the security of the meeting. You may want different settings for staff meetings, counseling sessions, interactive class discussions or large lectures.

Large Group or Public Event

There are several options provided by Zoom that enables you to share while minimizing disruptions from unwanted participants, commonly referred to as ?Zoom Bombing?. Consult this article for more information about this topic.

Sharing a Zoom link for a public event

When sharing a Zoom link publicly, additional steps are needed to prevent the Internet trolling known as Zoom bombing. To customize meeting settings for publicly shared links, login at uio.zoom.us, then choose settings on the left menu.

• Make sure screen sharing settings is set to that only the host can share (this is the default)
• Lock the meeting. This can be done by the host during the meeting. When the meeting is locked, no new participants can join, even if they have the meeting ID and password
• Mute participants on entry. This is default at UiO.
• Join before host. If disabled, participants may only join after the host has started the meeting
• Waiting room. This feature lets the host control when a participant joins the meeting.
• Authenticated users. This optional feature makes sure that only authenticated users can join the meeting. Do not use this feature if you have participants or guests joining from outside of UiO.
• Enable a passord for the meeting. When sharing the link publicly, omit the password from the link, and instead write the password below. This will mitigate automated trolling programs that scrape social media for Zoom links.
• Do not use your personal meeting ID

For more information, please see the document How to avoid ?Zoom Bombing?.