Suggestion for Managing a Short-Term Zoom Outage

It’s infrequent, but Zoom does occasionally suffer from a technical problem which prevents you from logging in or connecting to a meeting.

Fortunately Zoom is usually able to correct major problems quite quickly and it may be the easiest solution is to simply wait out the problem. You can check Zoom’s status on their status page, https://status.zoom.us/ and if the problem is severe, you can find announcements for the University of Calgary community at the UService IT page, https://ucalgary.service-now.com/it.

If you’re not able to wait, you have a class scheduled for example, we suggest using Microsoft Teams for videoconferencing instead. Microsoft Teams is part of our Office 365 package and is available to all faculty, staff and students.

If you don’t have Microsoft Teams already installed on your computer, there are many ways to start an ad hoc meeting using Microsoft Teams, but this one quick way to access Teams is through your webmail.

• Click on the Waffle button on the top left of your webmail (https://webmail.ucalgary.ca) and then click on Teams. Teams will then launch in a new window.
  • You will have to be logged in with Multi-Factor Authentication. If you have not enabled MFA for your account, now is a good moment. Find more information on MFA at https://it.ucalgary.ca/mfa/home.    
• Click the Calendar on the left side of Teams. The view will change to a view of your calendar.
• Click Meet Now at the top of the page, you can then Start the Meeting. You may have to allow your web browser access to your camera and microphone.
• Click Join Now to start the meeting.
• Finally, you can Copy Meeting Link to get a link you can share with your other participants.

For more information you can find how to use Teams features during a meeting can be found as part of this article on everything you need to know about Teams which can be found at https://ucalgary.service-now.com/kb_view.do?sysparm_article=KB0033078#UsingMeetings.

If you are teaching using Zoom, you may want to use the D2L / Brightspace News tool, (find a guide at https://elearn.ucalgary.ca/d2l-news-tool/) or e-mail the class list (find a guide at https://elearn.ucalgary.ca/sending-email-to-class/) to update students with your plans to handle the problem.

If you are running a Hybrid class, with students in person and online, you can use YuJa Software Capture tool – which is installed on all lectern computers – to record your session. The easiest way to manage recording a video using Yuja is via D2L (find a guide at https://elearn.ucalgary.ca/how-to-record-a-yuja-video/). Once you have a video recorded you can share it with students through your D2L Shell (find a guide at https://elearn.ucalgary.ca/sharing-a-video-in-d2l/).

With any luck, it’s taken as long as it takes to read these suggestions for Zoom to come back