How to Invite Someone to A Zoom Meeting, Step By Step With Photos

How to Invite Someone to a Zoom Meeting: The Ultimate Guide

Zoom has become an essential tool for staying connected in our increasingly virtual world. According to Zoom‘s own data, the platform‘s daily active users jumped from 10 million in December 2019 to over 300 million by April 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic forced many interactions online. Even as offices and schools have reopened, Zoom remains a go-to for meetings, classes, webinars, and virtual events thanks to its ease of use and robust features.

One of the most important skills for any Zoom host is knowing how to invite others to join your meetings. Whether you‘re scheduling a team check-in, hosting a live workshop, or just wanting to video chat with friends and family, you need to be able to get everyone into the virtual room. Fortunately, Zoom makes sending invitations straightforward, with options for both advance scheduling and last-minute requests.

In this ultimate guide, we‘ll walk you through everything you need to know to successfully invite people to your next Zoom meeting. We‘ll cover:

• How to invite someone when scheduling a meeting
• How to invite someone to a meeting already in progress
• What key details to include in your Zoom invitations
• Tips for ensuring your invites are seen and accepted
• Troubleshooting common invitation issues

By the end, you‘ll feel confident about getting all the right people into your Zoom meetings. Let‘s dive in!

Inviting Someone When Scheduling a Meeting

The simplest way to invite people to a Zoom meeting is to do it as you‘re scheduling the meeting itself. Zoom integrates directly with popular calendar tools like Google Calendar and Outlook, making it easy to create a new meeting and send out invitations in just a few clicks.

Here‘s how to invite someone when scheduling a new Zoom meeting:

1. Open the Zoom app and sign in
2. Click the "Schedule" button
3. Input your meeting details, including the topic, date, time, and duration
4. Under "Video," choose whether you want the host and participants‘ video on or off when joining
5. Under "Audio," select whether people can join via computer audio, telephone, or both
6. In the "Calendar" section, select your preferred calendar for adding the meeting
7. Click "Schedule" to finish setting up the meeting and open the calendar invitation
8. Add the email addresses of the people you want to invite to the calendar invite
9. Click "Send" to email the Zoom meeting invitation to all participants

The Zoom invitation will include all the essential details for joining the meeting, such as:

• Meeting topic
• Date and time (with time zone)
• Clickable link to join via computer or mobile device
• Meeting ID and passcode
• Phone numbers for joining via telephone
• Instructions for participating in the meeting

Make sure to schedule and send your invitations well in advance of the meeting start time. This gives invitees plenty of notice to adjust their schedules and plan to attend. For recurring meetings, like weekly team stand-ups, you can also choose to make the invite recurring so it shows up on everyone‘s calendar at the right time each week.

Tips for Calendar Invites:

• Double check that you‘ve invited all the necessary participants before sending
• Include a clear, concise subject line for your meeting topic
• Set an reminder 10-15 minutes before the meeting begins
• If you‘re expecting a large group, enable the Waiting Room feature so you can admit participants individually and avoid disruptive join/leave chimes
• For public events, include a registration link rather than the full Zoom details to better control attendance

Inviting Someone to a Meeting in Progress

But what if you‘re already in a Zoom meeting and realize you forgot to invite someone important? Or maybe you want to bring in a last-minute subject matter expert to weigh in on the discussion. No worries—Zoom allows you to invite additional people even after a meeting has started.

Here‘s how to invite someone to a Zoom meeting that‘s already underway:

1. From within the Zoom meeting, click the "Participants" button in the meeting control toolbar
2. In the Participants panel, click "Invite"
3. You‘ll see a pop-up with tabs for inviting via email, contacts, or copying the invitation link
4. To invite someone via email, select the "Email" tab, choose your preferred email service from the list (e.g. Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook), and add your recipients‘ email addresses
5. To invite someone via your Zoom contacts, select the "Contacts" tab and check the box next to each person you want to invite
6. To copy the invitation to send through another messaging tool, select the "Copy Invite Link" tab and click the "Copy Meeting Invitation" button to save it to your clipboard
7. Once you‘ve selected your invitation delivery method, click the "Invite" or "Send" button to dispatch your invitations
8. You (and your invited guests) will get a notification when each person joins the meeting

With the email option, your invitation will automatically populate with the meeting details in the email body, so all you have to do is add recipients and click send. The contacts option is handy if you have frequently-invited colleagues already stored in your Zoom app. And the invite link option is useful if you need to send a quick invitation via SMS, Slack, or another messaging platform.

The key with in-meeting invitations is to send them as soon as you realize they‘re needed. It may take a few minutes for the recipient to notice the invite, open Zoom, and join the call. Give them a heads up in the meeting that you‘ve invited them so everyone knows to expect a late addition.

Making Your Zoom Invitations Engaging

Of course, sending a Zoom invite is only half the battle. To ensure good attendance at your meetings and events, the invitations need to capture people‘s attention and motivate them to actually join. While the default Zoom invite text includes the key logistical details, it‘s a bit dry. Punch up your invitations with some personality and flair to boost response rates.

Try these tips for making your Zoom meeting invitations more compelling:

• Add a personal note at the top of calendar and email invites explaining why you‘re looking forward to having each person attend
• Hype up the meeting‘s agenda and how each invitee can contribute to the goals
• Mention any fun elements you have planned, like breakout room activities, polls, or Q&As
• Brand your invitations by adding your company logo, images, and brand colors
• Include a silly gif or meme to show the meeting will be engaging, not boring
• Promise attendees a digital gift, like an e-book, coupon code, or charitable donation for joining
• Create a custom Zoom background for your meeting and encourage invitees to do the same for a sense of event

Protecting Your Zoom Meetings

As Zoom‘s popularity has skyrocketed, so too have concerns about the platform‘s security. Early in the pandemic, headlines warned about "Zoombombing," or unwanted guests crashing private meetings, sometimes with harassing or explicit content. Zoom has since released several updates to help keep meetings secure and give hosts more control over who can participate.

When sending your Zoom invitations, communicate the measures you‘ve put in place to protect the meeting. Depending on the sensitivity of the subject matter and attendees, you may want to enable these features:

• Passcode protection: Require a passcode for all participants joining by computer, tablet, phone, or H.323/SIP room system
• Waiting Room: Have attendees wait in a virtual staging area before being individually admitted by the host
• Meeting lock: Prevent anyone from joining the meeting once all expected attendees have arrived
• Remove participant: Boot anyone who shouldn‘t be in the meeting, preventing them from rejoining
• Disable participant screen sharing: Limit screen sharing to only the host to prevent unwanted interruptions
• Mute participants: Put all attendees on mute by default to reduce background noise and allow the host to unmute people one at a time
• Disable private chat: Turn off Zoom‘s private chat feature so participants can only send messages to the full group, not one-on-one

You may also want to avoid posting the full Zoom meeting details publicly if you‘re trying to restrict attendance. Instead, ask people to register via a Google Form or other signup tool to receive the private link and passcode. This allows you to vet attendees beforehand and avoid party crashers.

Other Zoom Invitation FAQs

Can I send a single Zoom invite to multiple people?
Yes! You can add up to 100 email addresses to a single Zoom meeting invite. Just separate each email with a comma.

How do I invite someone to a recurring Zoom meeting?
When scheduling your meeting, select the "Recurring meeting" checkbox. Choose your recurrence preferences, then add your invitees like normal. The invite will specify that it‘s a recurring meeting.

Can I edit a Zoom meeting invitation after sending it?
Yes, if you need to change any meeting details after sending out invitations, you can update the meeting in the Zoom app or your calendar tool. The changes will be sent to all original invitees.

How do I resend a Zoom invite?
To resend an invite, go to the Meetings tab in the Zoom app, select the appropriate meeting, and click "Copy Invitation." Then simply send the meeting details to anyone who needs them again.

What if my Zoom invite isn‘t working?
If someone reports trouble with your Zoom invite link, first make sure they‘re entering the meeting ID and passcode correctly. If they still can‘t join, check that your meeting isn‘t locked or at maximum capacity. You may need to readmit them from the Waiting Room or remove an existing participant to free up space.

Conclusion

Hosting a Zoom meeting is only useful if the right people actually show up. And getting people to show up starts with a clear, compelling invitation. With this guide, you now have a step-by-step process for inviting people to your Zoom meetings, whether you‘re scheduling in advance or pulling in participants on the fly. You‘ve also picked up some tips for making your invitations engaging and secure to boost attendance.

Equipped with these invitation skills, you‘re ready to make your next Zoom meeting the best-attended one yet. So get scheduling, start sending, and happy Zooming!