Can I trim the Zoom invite spam?

September 8, 2021 10:32 AM

I'm setting up a repeating series of Zoom meetings. If I'm giving my coworkers a clickable link, the Meeting ID, and the Password, is there any good accessibility reason not to trim the lengthy list of phone numbers and IP addresses that gets put at the end of an auto-generated Zoom invite? Especially if that Zoom meeting is only being used by people all living in the same US state?

My attempts to google an answer to this are just getting info about trimming zoom video recordings.

I usually do Zoom through my well-suited laptop. When I haven't had a laptop, I've either:
a) been on my smart phone, and tapped the invite link in an email
or
b) been on a desktop without a camera/mic, and called in using a land line so I could at least talk. Zoom automatically prompts me with the call-in number when I do this.

In neither of those scenarios am I having to look at the invite text to get a phone number. So can I just delete it all when sending out an invite?

posted by HeroZero to Work & Money (10 answers total)

The link and the passcode is enough for most people to access from a computer or smartphone. You can safely delete the rest of the text.
posted by amil at 10:36 AM on September 8, 2021 [2 favorites]

I've had people call in when like their internet is down (or poor) or whatever, in which case it would be convenient to pull the phone number from the invite. But presumably you can just leave the 1 relevant phone number for that case.
posted by brainmouse at 10:39 AM on September 8, 2021 [2 favorites]

I usually leave all the info as at this point that’s what people are familiar with seeing as an invite but I highlight the link/password. I figure it’s usually superfluous but when people need it, they’ll really need it
posted by raccoon409 at 10:50 AM on September 8, 2021

Back when I was using Zoom daily multiple times a day I routinely deleted all of that. A meeting prompts you when you join how you want to connect to audio, and provides you all the phone numbers right there on the meeting if you choose join by phone.
posted by phunniemee at 10:52 AM on September 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

Yeah, you can delete all the extra phone numbers. I'm not sure why Zoom thinks it's important to give everyone their Tacoma dial-in number in addition to their San Jose number (and DC, and New York, and Houston, and...); maybe it's for the handful of people who still pay for long-distance calls or something. I've certainly never used any of them except the default (which is contained in the "One tap mobile" field).

I'd retain the URL, the Meeting ID, the passcode, and the One Tap Mobile link.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:14 AM on September 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

What I send depends on the technical proficiency and Zoom familiarity of the intended audience. For colleagues with whom I'm using Zoom all the time, just putting the Zoom link in the location field in Google Calendar is often enough. If I want to put a bit more for them, I'll just put the full invitation info (deleting all those annoying extra spaces at the beginning of each phone-number line) into the calendar event's description area.

For folks, especially clients, who might not be as familiar with Zoom or who might prefer to call in audio, I definitely include the Zoom link in the location field and the full invitation info in the description, as well as in any agenda I might send out as a Google Doc (again, minus those annoying extra spaces).

For clients in general who are already familiar with Zoom, I might include the Zoom link in the location field and in the description and/or agenda, along with the meeting ID and passcode, the One Tap Mobile link, sometimes one of the phone numbers, and the link to find more phone numbers. That way they have what they need if they have to call in using the phone, even if just for audio, but it's not taking up a ton of space in the invitation or agenda.
posted by limeonaire at 11:28 AM on September 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

I use all the numbers. We recently switched over to dialpad phone software, and I have several different meetings: if I use phone number number 1 in the list I can append [code],,#1234456778#[/code] for “contact one” and the next number for contact/meeting two and so on without dialpad trying to append it to the same contact.

Before that I’d just generate a QR code and dial in from my personal cell phone.
posted by tilde at 11:34 AM on September 8, 2021

I don’t use Zoom anymore so can’t check the click-path, but there is a way to configure the default dial-in regions, so that only those that you care about will be listed in the standard copypasta.

I remember doing this so that I listed only the handful of numbers that might actually be relevant to my stakeholders.
posted by whisk(e)y neat at 1:15 PM on September 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

Feel free to delete, remember that information will always be available to you in the meeting planning screen. If someone needs a specific thing they can ask and you can relay. I'm guessing this will be rare enough it won't bother anyone.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 4:19 PM on September 8, 2021

This is doable. I’m not sure how I did it but my zoom meeting invites (set up through the Outlook Schedule a meeting button) prepopulate with a shortened version. I think this is either buried in the zoom settings or outlook plugin settings. Hopefully there’s an equivalent for whatever email client you use, if the latter is the case.
posted by iamkimiam at 11:33 PM on September 8, 2021