Scheduling calls on Zoom
Zoom is a cloud-based video conferencing service that allows you to host and join online meetings with your team members, clients, or anyone else. You can use Zoom to schedule calls on Insightgig and invite participants via email. Zoom offers many features to enhance your online meetings, such as screen sharing, chat, breakout rooms, polls, reactions, and more.
Scheduling a meeting on InsightGig can be done at two locations within the platform to achieve different goals.
- First, to understand an expert's profile better before sharing a brief. For this, there is a 'Schedule a meeting' button on the profile page (full view) of each expert on the platform. In this case, the Zoom call will be a 1:1 with the expert from whose profile you initiated the meeting.
- Second, while collaborating with an expert on a project. For this instance, there is a 'Schedule a meeting' button at the top of the project collaboration page. At this location, it is possible to add all other collaborators on the project to the online meeeting.
Once you click the 'Schedule a meeting' button, a dialog box will open with a form allowing you to create a video conference call on Google Meet or Zoom.
Zoom and Google Calendar accounts are required!
You can connect your personal or organizational Zoom account to schedule meetings on our platform. To generate a meeting request, you also need to integrate your Google Calendar account. By integrating your Google Calendar account, you will be able to generate a meeting invite with Zoom links in it.
Let us see how you can use Zoom to collaborate on the InsightGig platform. In our example, we use the meeting button from the project collaboration page. The workflow to schedule a Zoom meeting from the expert profile page is similar, the only change being the call always being 1:1.
The steps to start using Zoom for online meetings on the InsightGig platform are as follows.
- Step 1: Link your Zoom account with InsightGig
- Step 2: Link your Google account with InsightGig
- Step 3: Schedule meetings via Zoom
Step 1 and 2 are one-time activities. Lets start with Step 1.
In this step, you are giving permission to InsightGig software to access and create meeting links on your behalf on Zoom. This is a one-time activity. Let's see how this can be done.
- When you click the Schedule a meeting button, you will see this dialog box with two options. Click on the Zoom logo to proceed further.
- You will see this screen for connecting your Zoom account. Click on Next to proceed further.
- You will be redirected to Zoom's web portal where you can use your credentials to sign in.
- After signing in to your Zoom account, you will be directed back to the InsightGig platform. That's it! Your Zoom account is now linked to your InsightGig account.
- On returning to the InsightGig platform, you will see the screen for Step 2, connecting your Google account to your InsightGig account. If your InsightGig account is already connected to Google due to your use of 'Sign in with Google' or 'Google Meet' integration, then this step will be automatically skipped. Click on Next to proceed further.
- You will be redirected to the default Google Sign-In window listing your Google Account.
- Coose an account and sign in with Google. You will need to give permission to InsightGig to view and edit your calendars on Google by pressing the Continue button on this screen.
- Post linking, you will be directed back to the InsightGig account. That's it!
You are now ready to schedule calls on Zoom seamlessly from within the InsightGig platform.
When you click the Schedule a Meeting button after the one-time linking process, you will see a pop-up window with a form.
You can fill in the information, just like you would on any online meeting scheduling software.
- Title: The title you want to give for the meeting. This will correspond to the title field of the meeting on Google Calendar invite.
- Description: The description of the meeting's objective. This will correspond to the description field of the meeting on Google Calendar invite.
- Starts: The starting date & time of your meeting.
- Ends: You need to choose the length of the call. The end time is automaticaly calculated by the software.
The length you choose should be equal or less than the maximum allowed as per the Zoom plan you have signed up for.
- Collaborators: If you click the Schedule a meeting button on the project collaboration page, you will see this additional field. You can choose which of the collaborators should be part of the meeting. This field will not be visible when you click the Schedule a meeting button on the brief.
Once you fill up all the fields, the Create meeting button will activate. Click on it, and you are done! You will see a temporary message just above the project title indicating that the meeting has been scheduled.
The meeting invite that you send out would look like this.
- Meeting Host: The email you used to log in to Zoom. This could be the same email ID as your InsightGig account.
- Organizer: The Google email you used to connect with the InsightGig account. This could also be the same email ID as your InsightGig account.
- Guests: The InsightGig accounts invited to the meeting (including you).
Pro Tip!
Once the online meeting is created from the InsightGig account, you can edit the meeting by accessing your Google account directly. You can use this option to change the date/time or add additional participants etc.
