Best Practices for Including Phone Participants in Zoom meetings

1. Always include a telephone option as an audio type for your meetings. You can enable this by default in the Zoom web portal under your Meeting settings in the “Schedule Meeting” section. You can access Zoom using the following link https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/.
   
   
   
2. Provide slides and any other files that will be used in the meeting before you start the meeting. (Send via email before the meeting, share in your LMS, or share files using Google Drive or Box.)
3. Provide an agenda or outline of what will be covered in the meeting before you start the meeting.
4. As a host, when you see that participant has joined via phone, ask them their name. For instance, you could say “Hello, who do we have joining today by phone?” or “Hi 413-555-1234, can I ask your name?”. The host can then rename that user to their preferred name in the participant window.
   1. To rename a participant, Click Participants.
      
      
      
   2. Locate the phone number of the participant you want to name and hover your mouse over their phone number. The Unmute and More buttons appear, click More.
      
      
      
   3. Select rename and then enter the name of the participant in the Rename box once it appears. 
      
5. When presenting, be as descriptive as possible about what is on screen. For instance, if it’s a PowerPoint presentation, describe the image and text on each slide along with the slide number as you transition between them.
6. Phone participants do not have the same options as other participants. Remind participants of this and inform the phone participants of the commands they can use.
   1. The following commands can be entered via DTMF tones using your phone's dial pad while in a Zoom meeting:
      

      *6 - Toggle mute/unmute phone

      *9 – Raise hand

7. Users who are dialing in may not be able to use the “raise hand" feature. Take time to ask if they have any questions or need to be recognized.

Learn more about joining Zoom meetings by phone using the following link https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362663-Joining-a-meeting-by-phone.