Appendix 1: Keeping your CU welcome call secure

Whilst we want the CU welcome call to be accessible as possible for new students, we also want it to remain secure and free from distractions. The following security suggestions assume you’re using Zoom, but are all easily transferable to whatever online service you may be using for your call.

Pre-call measures

• Don’t share the Zoom meeting link or meeting ID on a totally public domain. Either share this information by direct message or via a closed group.
• Do not send the link for the call until the day of the call, but do send reminders to all those who have signed up that the call is happening, when they will receive the link and that you are looking forward to meeting them.
• Make sure your Zoom call is password protected and only share the password directly with people who you are inviting to the call.
• Ensure that the waiting room function is enabled. You can set up a personalised waiting room message for your meeting to make sure people know they are in the right place.
• Have a list of the names of people who you have invited to your Zoom call (CU members, people in your CU freshers’ Facebook group, people who have signed up via Eventbrite) and only accept people into the call from the waiting room if they are names you have on your invite list.
• Make sure that everyone in the waiting room has labelled their screen with their name so that you can check them against your list of sign-ups. Do not let anyone into the call if their screen name doesn’t match a name on your signup list.

In-call measures

• Set screen sharing to only be possible for the tech host.
• Set the chat function to “only chat directly to the host”.
• Turn off “in meeting file transfer”.
• Turn off the virtual background.
• Mute everyone upon entry into the call and do not allow participants to unmute themselves. Questions can be asked in the breakout rooms.
• Don’t forget to have some of your tech host team looking through the pages of callers making sure nothing untoward is happening. If necessary, remove someone from the call.

Breakout rooms

• If you are using breakout rooms you need to unmute everyone just before you send them into their rooms.
• You need to make the breakout group leaders co-hosts so that they can mute people in their groups if necessary.

For more in-depth information on Zoom security and links to show you how to do any of the above steps, head to this article from Zoom.