Two regional AFS Zoom accounts for volunteers have been created for each region so that volunteers can schedule their own team meetings, orientations, and other virtual AFS events. Advantages of volunteers being able to schedule and conduct their own zoom meetings include the ability to download participant lists, record and play back meetings without staff involvement, the opportunity to create polls and breakout rooms in advance, and of course the flexibility to schedule your own meetings at will.
Volunteer team chairs and orientation coordinators have been sent the sign-in credentials. Click here for a short video tutorial on using your regional Zoom accounts, and feel free to write to AskAFS@afsusa.org if you have any additional questions.
Best practices for using these accounts:
- These accounts are for AFS activities only. Please use your own personal zoom account for non-AFS activities.
- Please be sure to check the already-scheduled meetings in the account to make sure that there isn’t a meeting scheduled for your desired date and time. If there is a conflicting meeting, please log out of that account and log in to the second account for your region. If there are meetings scheduled in both accounts for the date and time that you need, you can write to AskAFS@afsusa.org and we can schedule a meeting for you in a staff account.
- When creating a meeting, please name the title of your meeting with your team name, what the meeting is for, and your name and email address. For instance, “Western PA Mid-Year Orientation (Fred Rogers frogersAFS@gmail.com)”
- If you’d like the meeting to be recorded, you can set it to record automatically in the meeting reservation or start a recording during the meeting. You can choose whether you’d like it to record on your computer or in the cloud where it can be retrieved later in the account. We recommend recording in the cloud for easier access and support after the meeting has ended.
Troubleshooting tips
- If you're having trouble logging into one of the regional AFS accounts, make sure that you have manually logged out of your personal zoom account first before attempting to sign into the AFS accounts at https://afsusa.zoom.us **OR** just use a different browser that doesn't have your personal accounts and passwords saved.
- To have the host controls during the meeting, simply log into the account where you scheduled the meeting, find the meeting in the Meetings tab, and click "start meeting." All other attendees can simply join the meeting using the link that you have copied and sent to them.
Any questions about scheduling a Zoom meeting can be directed to AskAFS@afsusa.org.