As we wrap up the spring 2024 semester, Information Technology Services (ITS) is excited to share the latest edition of WSU’s Zoom newsletter and offer recent updates on important service changes, new videoconferencing features, and relevant resources.
Previous WSU Zoom newsletter editions are now available on our new ITS Newsletters webpage.
New Zoom Interface Arriving May 6
Starting Monday, May 6, WSU Zoom users will be prompted to update their Zoom desktop and mobile apps to the latest version (6.0), per university policy requiring quarterly Zoom application updates.
This update introduces a new look, feel, and functionality to Zoom as the service rebrands to Zoom Workplace. Enhancing familiar features and introducing new capabilities, this release will feature a revamped Zoom interface for a new visual and functional user experience.
Please be aware that WSU’s Zoom environment will not offer all new Zoom Workplace features, and access to Zoom Workplace’s artificial intelligence (AI) features and capabilities will not be available to users at this time.
Learn more about expected changes in Zoom’s version release notes.
Upcoming Interface and Feature Changes
Zoom Workplace delivers new features and enhancements to help streamline communications, increase engagement, and improve productivity — all within the Zoom experience users trust and love.
Starting May 6 for WSU users, Zoom will introduce the new Zoom Workplace branding, changing the app’s name on your device(s) and incorporating new design elements visible when joining meetings or using the app.
Zoom can automatically adapt your video layout to highlight the current and most recent speakers by enlarging their video tiles while keeping other participants in a smaller gallery view.
Share your screen, Zoom Whiteboards, and app windows simultaneously during a meeting, with participants seeing the multi-share as individual tabs within the meeting.
Zoom to release support documentation soon!
Hosts can select preset images to serve as the meeting background for all participants in a meeting and adjust how much to blend participant videos with the wallpaper image.
Change the appearance of both the Zoom app and the meeting interface by choosing from Light and Dark themes with additional color theme options including black, blue, green, and red.
Merges the Meetings and Calendar tab (if you connected Zoom to your WSU Outlook calendar) into one tab with a traditional calendar and a new agenda view to easily view upcoming meetings, invites, attendees, attachments, and more.
Zoom to release support documentation soon!
The default in-meeting toolbar displays fewer buttons and allows you to customize it by dragging and dropping icons to add, reorganize, or remove feature options during your meeting. Personalizations will sync across desktop experiences.
The toolbar also features new icons for ending and leaving a meeting and icons with updated names, such as “Share” for “Share Screen” and “React” for “Reactions.”
Zoom to release support documentation soon!
Zoom’s React feature now offers a wider variety of standard emojis. With more dynamic animations, the new Send with Effect option produces animated versions of a participant’s reaction, with emojis appearing and floating up and around a user’s video.
Animated reactions appear for participants with their camera enabled and can be disabled by hosts.
Zoom to release support documentation soon!
Annotation tools that appear when sharing screens offer a new look and feel, including making the options to annotate and magnify a shared screen accessible via a new three-dot icon next to the label of the Share view.
Zoom to release support documentation soon!
Operating System Compatibility
Version 6.0 of Zoom is compatible with numerous operating systems for Windows, Mac, iOS, and more. If you experience issues installing the new Zoom version, please ensure your device meets the minimum operating system requirements.
Supported operating systems for the new Zoom Workplace release include:
- Windows 10 or higher
- macOS 10.11 or higher
- iOS 13.1 or higher
- iPad 13 or higher
- Android 6.0x or higher
- Linux: Ubuntu 12.04, Mint 17.1, Red Hat Enterprise 8.0, Oracle Linux 8.0, CentOS 8, Fedora 21, OpenSUSE 13.2 or higher
Zoom version 5.17.11 will be the last version available for lower operating systems. Your local IT support team or WSU’s Zoom Services team can assist with any questions or concerns regarding updating Zoom on your device(s).
Protect your Meetings from Zoombombing
Following a recent Zoombombing incident, WSU’s Zoom Services team urges hosts to adopt best practices for securing public and private meetings to reduce the risk of unwanted disruptions.
For any assistance securing your meeting, please email WSU’s Zoom Services team.
Safeguard your Zoom meetings by enabling any of the following security measures that restrict certain in-meeting functionalities or control participant entry.
Manage your meeting security settings via the Zoom web portal.
Enable Waiting Rooms
Manually filter unwanted participants in a Waiting Room, with adjustable settings to automatically admit participants with a WSU Zoom account if preferred.
Restrict Screen Sharing
Lock screen sharing capabilities to prevent an unauthorized participant from sharing their screen at any moment.
Manage Participant Audio or Video
Actively manage who can unmute their audio or turn on their camera during a meeting to mitigate disruptions from inappropriate sounds or visuals by participants.
Limit Chat Disruptions
Disable chat capabilities to prevent participants from sending unsolicited messages or images and sharing information in private one-on-one chats.
Disable Whiteboarding and Annotations
Restrict participants from drawing or writing on top of, or otherwise altering, the content of a screen share during a meeting.
Require a Passcode
Require participants to have a passcode to join a meeting, ensuring only invited attendees with the private passcode can access the session.
Publicly sharing meeting passcodes or Join URLs embedded in meeting invitations on platforms like social media or websites increases the risk of potential Zoombombing. It is critical to keep these details private to prevent unauthorized meeting access.
Zoom Webinars offer the best security for virtual events open to the public. Unlike standard Zoom meetings, webinars automatically limit participant microphone and camera access to allow you to maintain a focused, secure meeting environment.
Zoom webinars ensure:
- Attendees join in listen-only mode
- Only the host, co-hosts, and panelists can mute or unmute their own audio and turn on or off their own video
- Hosts or co-hosts can manually unmute one or more attendees
- Participant lists are only visible to hosts, co-hosts, and panelists
- Attendees cannot rename themselves
- Attendee interactions are limited and managed by hosts
Learn more about WSU’s Zoom webinar licensing and expected cost.
Although standard meetings and webinars offer unique — and similar — features, please view a comparison of Zoom meetings and webinars to identify the best solution for any of your events
- Suspend participant activities.
- All video, audio, in-meeting chat, annotation, screen sharing, and recording will stop, and Breakout Rooms will end. This action allows hosts or co-hosts to work on removing a disruptive participant.
- Learn how to suspend participant activities.
- Remove the disruptive participant.
- Hosts should remove a disruptive participant as soon as possible; this will also prevent them from rejoining. If needed, co-hosts or other participants are encouraged to call WSU’s Zoom Services at 509-358-7742 and request the disruptive participant be removed from the meeting.
- Learn how to remove a participant in your meeting.
- Limit participant permissions.
- Quickly view the meeting security features and disable options that may allow a disruptive participant to share their screen, use the chat, rename themselves, unmute themselves, start their video, annotate over shared content, and more during your meeting.
- Learn how to adjust your in-meeting security.
- End the meeting.
- Immediately stop any unwanted disruption by ending your meeting. To prevent the Zoombomber from joining your future meetings, schedule a new meeting with a new meeting ID and ensure additional security measures are enabled.
- Report the incident.
- Hosts are encouraged to report Zoombombing incidents to the Zoom Trust and Safety team or WSU’s Zoom Services team and ensure proper documentation and action is taken for misconduct.
Automatic Passcode Protection for New Meetings
Effective January 2024, passcode protection is now the default security setting for new WSU Zoom meetings.
Transitioning from the previous default security setting of required authentication to passcode protection alleviates issues WSU and non-WSU participants experienced when joining meetings configured with required authentication.
Meetings created after Jan. 18, 2024, are automatically protected with a passcode. However, you retain the ability to enable required authentication or a waiting room as an alternate or additional security option via the WSU Zoom web portal for any meetings scheduled before or after this date.
WSU continues requiring all Zoom meetings to be secured with at least one security option (passcode, required authentication, or waiting rooms) to protect from Zoombombing and help technical support teams respond to calls for assistance.
Learn more about Zoom security settings in this WSU Knowledge Base article.
Zoom Version Updates Now Quarterly
In response to feedback from our survey, WSU’s Zoom Services team adjusted the schedule for mandatory Zoom updates from monthly to quarterly, with updates now expected on the first Monday of May, August, and November.
University policy requires you to install the latest version of the Zoom app once available to maintain device security against bugs or vulnerabilities, improve application use and functionality, and enhance video and audio quality.
Prepare for mandatory application updates by reviewing relevant Zoom version update information one week ahead of the version release date.
New Zoom Capabilities
With enhanced login capabilities, improved engagement tool management, and upgraded presentation sharing, Zoom makes it easier to boost productivity and provide more immersive interactions.
WSU Zoom users can now be signed in to Zoom on up to three devices simultaneously: two devices of the same type along with one additional device of a different type.
A common combination that aligns with this update includes remaining signed in to the Zoom app on one smartphone and two computers at the same time.
To maintain this limit, accessing Zoom on a fourth device, or a third device type, will automatically sign you out of the device with your earliest recorded login.
By allowing you to join meetings on your preferred devices without login-related delays, this change significantly improves the accessibility and convenience of the Zoom app.
With the recent launch of Zoom Surveys, this powerful standalone feature allows you to create and manage a library of surveys, polls, and quizzes available to use (and re-use) in any meeting or webinar.
Increasing productivity, Zoom Surveys allows you to access survey, poll, and quiz tools and view comprehensive results data directly within one personal, centralized library on the Zoom platform.
Quickly review your custom library and share your surveys, polls, and quizzes during your panel, or engage with attendees after a meeting by sharing via links or generating a QR code.
Create a more immersive meeting experience by sharing your PowerPoint slides as a Virtual Background.
- With this feature, participants can view your video directly on top of the screen share, and hosts can easily manage the presentation and the video directly from within the meeting controls.
- Set your PowerPoint presentation as your Zoom background.
Offer participants slide control to improve presentation flow.
- Hosts can provide slide control to other participants who present individual portions of the PowerPoint presentation. This feature eliminates the need for the presenter to move the slide forward, allowing for improved control of the slideshow.
- Enable slide control.
View a different screen share interface when connected to a meeting.
- If using dual monitors, share your PowerPoint presentation on one screen while accessing the presenter’s notes on the other. Learn more about slideshow and presenter views for dual monitors.
- If using a single monitor, start your slide show in a window instead of in full-screen mode to easily access meeting features. Learn more about slideshow and presenter views for single monitors.
Expiration Rules for Your Meeting IDs and Links
Zoom sets different expiration rules for different types of meetings.
If you experience an invalid meeting ID error when trying to start your meeting, the meeting ID has likely expired. Learn more about expired or deleted Zoom meetings.
Instant Meetings
If you start a meeting immediately without scheduling or inviting participants beforehand, the meeting ID will expire when the instant meeting ends.
Scheduled, Non-recurring Meetings
If you schedule a future one-time meeting, the meeting ID will expire 30 days after the scheduled date.
If you restart the same meeting ID within 30 days, it will remain valid for another 30 days. You can restart the same meeting ID as many times as you would like before it expires.
The meeting link will expire or become invalid when the 30-day period passes.
Recurring Meetings
If you schedule a future meeting with multiple occurrences that use the same meeting ID, the meeting ID will expire 365 days after you start the last occurrence meeting.
The meeting link will expire or become invalid when it has not been used for over 365 days.
Webinars
If the webinar is not currently in progress, Webinar IDs will expire and be unusable past the webinar’s scheduled end time.
Digital Signage
Using WSU’s no-cost Zoom digital signage tools, transform idle screens into dynamic information hubs to create a modern and engaging virtual experience for students, staff, and visitors.
Digital signage enhances open meeting spaces such as conference rooms, offices, study areas, and lobbies by displaying custom visuals, images, videos, and numerous forms of other multimedia content.
Read more about digital signage on Zoom Support.
With WSU’s videoconferencing license, WSU employees can deploy unlimited digital signage to a Zoom Room or other on-campus device at no additional cost.
Purchasing a display device (i.e., a monitor, screen, TV, tablet, kiosk, or similar device) and any additional hardware that may be required to make a device compatible with digital signage displays are the only expected costs for digital signage.
Please email WSU’s Zoom Services team to gain access to free digital signage tools or if your area currently uses digital signage.
The advanced yet user-friendly technologies of Zoom’s digital signage allow you to display a wide range of content, including images, videos, and websites, in Zoom Rooms and other on-campus spaces.
You can use Zoom digital signage to:
- Create a virtual bullet board for events or ceremonies
- Broadcast public meetings or webinars
- Stream external video platforms like YouTube
- Deliver general announcements or emergency alerts
- Display social media feeds
- Share local news
- Display local weather
- Broadcast live metrics like support wait times
- Engage with daily trivia
- And so much more.
Target your content and messaging to any space by creating and assigning customized digital signage for displays at the room, floor, location, or account level.
Zoom allows you to upload images, videos, or other virtual materials to a centralized content library to make your assets accessible across your entire account or selectively available to specific rooms, floors, or locations for targeted digital signage display.
Create a digital signage playlist to easily deploy images or videos across multiple locations at once. With a playlist, you can wirelessly rotate through multiple images, videos, or forms of media with customized timing intervals. You can also set how long before and after a scheduled meeting your digital signage displays in Zoom Rooms while they are not in use for screen sharing and virtual meetings.
Departments can create unlimited digital signage-only displays and rooms for free without using or acquiring a Zoom Room.
Digital signage-only rooms require a device (i.e., monitor, screen, or tablet) and separate hardware that will allow you to show content or share your screen on the display device. View a list of Zoom’s suggested equipment for digital signage-only rooms.
The primary purpose of a digital signage-only room is to display digital signage content. A digital signage-only room can join Zoom meetings and webinars as a participant, but it can only receive audio, video, and shared content. Digital signage-only rooms cannot start or host meetings.
Cloud Recordings
Meeting recordings are retained in the Zoom web portal for 365 days for WSU staff and 425 days for Video Conference (VC) instructors. Any cloud recordings exceeding these periods are then automatically deleted.
Download meeting recordings using local storage options to retain videos beyond 365 or 425 days.
View, download, or delete your cloud recordings through the WSU Zoom web portal:
- Sign in to wsu.zoom.us with your WSU credentials.
- Click Recordings on the left navigation menu.
- Click the Cloud Recordings tab.
- Select a recording and you will then see options for managing the recording.
Learn more about managing cloud recording in this Zoom support article.
Thank You For Your Feedback
Thank you to everyone who participated in our most recent survey and provided feedback regarding WSU’s Zoom services. Your responses significantly influenced a recent change in university policy that reduces the frequency of version updates to enhance your experience with the videoconferencing application. We are excited to offer additional opportunities in future newsletters for you to share your insights and help improve WSU’s virtual collaboration environment.
Questions?
Explore the WSU Knowledge Base for additional instructional Zoom guides covering WSU Zoom account access, meeting controls and settings, privacy and security options, and much more.
Please direct questions to WSU’s Zoom Services team via email at zoom.support@wsu.edu.
Meet the Team
Travis Williams
Manager, VC Infrastructure and Support
Given my role at WSU, I cultivate a team with expertise and leadership in videoconference delivery and management. My team represents WSU’s distance education and collaborative communication interests. We strive to conduct outstanding support for the WSU community, providing tools and transparent reporting to technical teams across the institution. My goal is for stakeholders who engage my team to have a positive outcome, and also to feel confident the service they rely upon is in the best hands possible.
Brandon Henry
Video Conferencing Specialist
As a video Conferencing specialist, my role is to provide technical support and training to Washington State University Zoom users. I enjoy serving WSU customers because it allows me to help create meaningful connections and facilitate seamless virtual interactions, ultimately improving the user experience and achieving the goal of enhancing collaboration and communication within the WSU community.
Casey O’Leary
Video Conferencing Specialist
As a graduate of WSU myself, I have always enjoyed my experience within the WSU community. Previously, this was as a student and sports fan, but now I’m able to contribute in a professional manner by providing technical support, training, and administration of WSU’s video conferencing service. My goal is to provide the highest level of service within my capacity in ITS, so that we can continue to grow and progress the overall WSU community.