As we're all working from home at the moment it’s never been so important to communicate with each other and at Slipstream we're always looking for different ways of communicating and staying connected to each other.

We've been using Zoom for a while now and I just wanted to give you some quick tips on how easy it is to host a video call, conference call or team meetings and what the recipient will receive and how easy it is for them to just connect and join a video call, whether it's friends, family or business colleagues.

You can watch the video which will walk you through the whole process from start to finish or follow the step by step guide set out below. Let’s take a look at how to set up a video call using Zoom.

Go to zoom.us/signup and click on the sign-up button, it's a big blue button saying ‘sign up, it's free’.

It will ask for your email address and having entered that you click ‘sign up’.

You will be sent an email asking you to activate your Zoom account.

You will get a message saying can start a test meeting. Clicking here will launch the download.

It’s a very light app and takes just a few seconds.

You will now just download and run Zoom.

You click on the downloaded application which launches Zoom and you can start a new meeting straight away.

Having downloaded Zoom and opened the application you will get a pop up window where you schedule or start a new meeting.

When you select ‘new meeting’ it opens the video window and you can adjust your settings and invite guests.

At the bottom of the application is where you can invite a guest, you will get a pop up window and you simply go to the email, click your email provider and Zoom will automatically fill the email with the ‘one click’ Zoom link so the recipient can go straight into the meeting.

If they are joining later, they can open Zoom and just put in the meeting ID and they will be able to join using just that. If you have password turned on, then the password will be included. This can be turned off in the advance features.

So just to recap, we've just, from our Zoom account, set up a meeting and sent a guest an invite by email. They will receive an email with a link which they will click. This will open a page in their browser and they can either download and run Zoom or just join from their browser.

Often when you’re setting up a video call with someone for the first time you probably have just spoken with them on the phone or you're still on the phone with them. You’ve asked them to jump on a quick video call. They will have got their email and and launched their browser window where you can advise them that all they need to do is click ‘join from browser’ and pop their name in.

There will be a pop up where they can start a new meeting or click join a meeting, clicking here will give them access to the meeting you’ve just set up.

They'll now enter straight into the meeting unless the host has their settings set so that the host has to admit them into the room, alternatively they will go straight into the video meeting.

When you are both in the room you can toggle your video and sound on and off by clicking the icons in the bottom left corner.

If you click the small arrow by the video icon you can access further functions. You can check here that you are using either the camera from your computer or you can choose your webcam camera. In the same way, you can choose your computer microphone or webcam microphone by clicking the up arrow by the microphone icon.

You will now be in your Zoom meeting. For group meetings, you would send another invite and the new recipient would just join in.

So that’s it, your colleagues or friends can just jump on in seconds without creating an account.

Happy Zooming!