3 Ways to Create a ZipDX Virtual Meeting

Posted by mjgraves on December 29, 2016

The ZipDX conferencing platform aims to be as versatile as possible, allowing you to schedule a virtual conference with your group in a variety of ways that suit your needs and available technology.

The three main ways that you can schedule, which we’ll outline below, are as follows:

Online: Schedule via the ZipDX Web Portal.
Calendar: Use your email calendar whether that’s via Outlook or Gmail (Google Calendar).
Telephone: Schedule a conference the old fashioned way, right from your mobile phone or landline.

Online: How to Schedule Your Virtual Conference from the ZipDX Web Portal

In this video you can view a sample meeting setup process. In this example, the user is scheduling a multilingual conference with English and French Speakers.

Here are the steps in detail:

1 - Log into www.zipdx.com

All of the conferencing and administrative functions are handled by logging into www.ZipDX.com using your email address and PIN.

When you log in, you will be on the HOME tab. Here you will see in-progress meetings and pending meetings (scheduled for the future), if any.

Noah-Home

You will also see your conference “templates”. Conference templates allow you to save various meeting parameters for easy reuse in the future. Every organizer using ZipDX starts out with one template called “Meeting.” This is used for “simple” meetings – a regular conference call with no interpretation.

For the purposes of scheduling your first multilingual conference call you will use the basic “Meeting” template. In the process of working through this tutorial you will add the details necessary to create a multilingual conference.

Note: For the purposes of this exercise let us stipulate that this call will involve English and Spanish.

2 - Create a conference using the basic conference template

Create A Conference

Begin by clicking on the “Create A Conference” link shown beside the meeting template. Set the date & time of the meeting:

Create-a-Conference-Time-Date

Replace the default “Topic” with a descriptive title for your meeting:

Create-a-Conference-Settings-Topic-Code

3 - Add Attendees

Add Attendees

Invite people to the conference, using their email address, one at a time. Remember to add the interpreter(s) as well as the hosts and attendees.

Create A Conference Adding Participants

If an attendee is not already in the database, you will see an indication reporting “Not Listed” and a link that says “Pre-Register”. Click on Preregister.

4 - Pre-Registration

Participant Pre-Registration

On the pre-registration pop-up screen, enter the person’s first and last name, set their proper time zone, and enter their company name.

Create-a-Conference-Preregistration

Enter the person’s telephone number, INCLUDING “+” and the COUNTRY CODE. If you would dial 011-52-13344556677 to dial from your regular phone, then enter +5213344556677.

If the person is a Spanish-speaker, select Spanish as their preferred language.

Click SUBMIT preregister the participant.

If after preregistering a participant you want to add additional numbers, for a person, click “Update” once you have completed the initial pre-registration step; the new form will let you add another number.

5 - Multilingual Settings

Enable Multilingual Capability

The configuration of the multilingual settings are at the bottom of the Audio Features section of the page. The default multilingual setting is Not Enabled.

To enable the multilingual capability select “Over the phone” as the conference type. This will cause various other settings to be displayed.

Talk-through and Feedback Settings

“Talk-through” allows the current speaker to be heard mixed under the interpreters voice. This provides assurance that the interpreter is in fact following the speaker.

“Feedback” is some of the interpreters delivery mixed into the room with the current speaker. This gives the current speaker confidence that the interpreter is following them well. In the case of a formal presentation it can also give them a sense of timing, allowing them to adjust the pace of their presentation in order to accommodate the interpretation.

Both Talkthru and Feedback are adjustable in five steps from “Off” to “Loud.” The default is “Soft” which should be satisfactory for most situations.

Language Settings

Next, select the number of languages (2-8) involved in the conference. Then enter the list of languages. Languages are specified using ISO standard two-letter language codes.

For example, the following images shows how to create a conference in three languages; English, French & Spanish.

000100d

Additional Examples

Let’s consider a conference involving four languages. In addition to adding the additional interpreters to the listed participants, the multilingual settings would be as follows:

000102d

This stipulates four languages in use; English (EN), German (DE), French (FR) and Russian (RU). Similarly, the following example…

…defines a conference with two languages in use; French (FR) and Japanese (JA).

About Language Codes

ZipDX uses ISO 639-1 standard two-letter language codes. While there are dozens of such codes possible, the current ZipDX multilingual implementation supports the following languages.

en – English, zh – Chinese , de – German, it – Italian, ja – Japanese, ko – Korean

pl – Polish, pt – Portuguese, es – Spanish, fr – French, ru – Russian, ar – Arabic

Each of these are valid when setting up a ZipDX multilingual conference call.

6 - Assign Roles

Assign Roles

With the multilingual settings now established, the final step is to assign roles. As the conference organizer you are a Host by default, but there can be more than one person with host authority in the meeting. All others are assigned to the default role of Participant.

Create A Conference Assigning Roles

The interpreter MUST be assigned to the role of Interpreter.

If other people on your team will be serving as chairman or moderator, mark them as Host so that they can also access the on-line dashboard during the meeting.

7 - Actually Creating The Meeting

Create The Meeting!

Click SAVE and your meeting will be set up; all the participants will receive email notification. As the ORGANIZER, by default you will NOT receive an email.

There is a link on summary page to send yourself an invitation. That message includes a calendar attachment so you can add the conference to your own calendar.

Calendar: How to Schedule Your Virtual Conference via Outlook or Google Calendar

At work you live in your email inbox all day, whether you want to or not. So, what better way to schedule a ZipDX virtual conference then directly from your email client’s calendar.

Here are instructions fro two of the most popular platforms, Outlook and Gmail.

Schedule via Outlook

Scheduling The Conference

In Outlook go to the Calendar view.
Click on the New Meeting icon in the ribbon (pictured above.)
Setup the meeting as you would for any normal meeting.
1. (1) Add the meeting participants To: the proposed meeting.
2. (2) Give it an informative Subject.
3. (3) Set the Start Date & Time.
4. (4) Set the End Date & Time.
5. (5) In the body of the message put whatever information would be helpful to the meeting participants.
6. (6) Finally, add ZipDX to the meeting by inviting meeting@cal.zipdx.com to the meeting.
Send the meeting invitation to all participants.

Outlook Meeting Setup Example

And remember, it’s very important to add ZipDX as a “Meeting Participant.” Adding ZipDX as a meeting participant is the part that makes Outlook and ZipDX work seamlessly together.

Schedule via Gmail

Scheduling The Conference

In Google Calendar click on the Create Button to begin the process.

Google Meeting Setup Example

Setup the meeting as you would for any normal meeting.
- (1) Give it an informative Subject.
- (2) Set the Start Date & Time.
- (3) Set the End Date & Time.
- (4) In the Description put whatever information would be helpful to the meeting participants.
- (5) Add the meeting participants using the Add guests tool.
- (6) Finally, add ZipDX to the meeting by inviting meeting@cal.zipdx.com to the meeting.
Click SAVE to create the meeting.
You’ll be prompted about sending invitations as shown below.

Be sure to click on Send so that everyone, including ZipDX, receives a meeting invitation.

Again, it’s highly important to Add ZipDX as a “Meeting Participant”Adding ZipDX as a meeting participant (#6 above) is the critical part. It’s that step that makes Google Docs and ZipDX work seamlessly together.

Telephone: How to Schedule Your Virtual Conference from Your Telephone

This one couldn’t be simpler and is nearly self-explanatory.

You can schedule your virtual conference from any phone whether you’re in your office or on the go with your mobile phone.

Follow these three simple steps:

Dial-in
Authenticate using your PIN if you’re not automatically recognized
Follow the prompts, which includes “Press 2 to start a spontaneous conference using your default template.”

Additionally if you’re dialing in from your phone to join a conference you can do that using <a href=”https://numbers.zipdx.com/”>any of our 50+ access lines</a>.

When you call in for your conference and your telephone number has already been added to your profile (Auto-ID) the system will automatically recognize you and place you into the conference.

If you’re calling from a telephone number that isn’t in your profile you’ll be prompted to key in your PIN before joining the conference.

Additional Resources

For more in-depth detail on the methods above, check out our resources here:

Need Help?

The ZipDX audio conferencing experts help solve people’s conference calling challenges every day. No challenge is too big and your consultation is free so, click here to schedule your virtual conferencing consultation today.

Posted in: Knowledgebase