Zoom and Miro: best practices to combine these tools

Hey @AMC, thanks for reaching out. Here are my thoughts on your questions:

Re: participants toggling screens

A very high-quality onboarding to Miro is key here. I’ve run a few events of up to 300-pax and this ‘toggling screen’ issue hardly cropped up. If the experience is designed well with plenty of interactions, participants will be more than happy to be in Miro most of the time. Because that’s where the action is.

(Also, I limit the amount of technology. Everything happens on the Miro board, including my slides, so there’s practically zero screen toggling in my sessions.)

There are many studies today that showed having cameras off/not seeing self on the screen increases productivity and reduces fatigue. I also find that participants listen and engage better when they don’t look at me :)

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/02/new-study-turning-off-cameras-in-virtual-meetings-boosts-productivity.html

As a facilitator, it’s always best to work with 2 screens, one each for Zoom and Miro. In my sessions, ‘cameras on’ are optional. In some homes, keeping cameras on may not be possible. For those who have cameras on, I’m grateful that I’m able to see expressions on the other monitor. It’s a privilege. 

To your question, yes, I see all cursors and I see participants’ faces on the other screen.

Re: Zoom+Miro integration

This is not a great experience unless you’re using Miro in a small persistent group or team. For example, with team members at work or perhaps small school discussion groups. It’s an issue with how Miro is integrated into Zoom. So if someone is running an old Zoom app, there’s a chance that Miro will not work. Clunky.

However, if you really want a very good experience in terms of integrated Miro+video conferencing, then I’d suggest trying out Butter (https://butter.us/). Here’s a recent video recording:

You’ll notice that everyone can use Miro and everyone can see each other :) You can try Butter for free and integrate it with your Miro account. Let me know how it goes?

I have been using Miro and Zoom quite successfully for the past year (teaching a bunch of different university classes).   I use breakout rooms -- and during the breakout room time, each room is working within a small chunk of a Miro board.  So, if a student is in BreakoutRoom3, they go to the shared miro board and look for the zone (a big square) labelled “Breakout Room 3”.  They collaborate/work with their team “on” (in?) that square.  They discuss, create, etc (say for 15 mins) then everyone comes back together and I ask each room to walk us through what they did/found.

You can see this -- and lots of other random ideas/tips in this board I made (below).     

Hello @Marla, if you’re still looking for ideas on how to use Miro and Zoom together, you can check out this interactive webinar that I ran. My training and workshop sessions are similar to this. Everything happens in Miro, no screensharing and participants interact with the content, other participants and the facilitator all the time.

Hi all-I was thrilled to see this thread:). I am likely to fall under Scenario 2 above:

Scenario 2:

25 students in a classroom and work on 1 discussion together (e.g. brainstorming)

I will be running an on-line workshop (with 6-8 participants)-most likely using Zoom-and I can’t quite understand how I would then incorporate Miro into this process, i.e., if I’m the “trainer”-and I switch over to Miro (in a new tab)-do my participants see my screen/Miro diagram? I’m not understanding how I can have my Zoom meeting/workshop “open” and then how Miro fits into all of this? Can somebody please clarify this in very easy to understand language:). Many thanks!

@meloffbird

For people new to Miro I’ve found it useful to follow a ‘field trip’ or “off-site” metaphor.  What I mean by this is: people are familiar with zoom (this is location A: like a team showing up to a big meeting at their office). And the addition of a new platform with a new interface can be disorienting for some (like finding parking and the right entrance and floor of some offsite office, conference space or other location. They show up late or miss the orientation.) 

-> for this reason I like to demo, from zoom screenshare, the basic use and interface of Miro as well as any portions of MIro board they may later be asked to navigate on their own— I demo this Miro usage from a screen share in zoom and then paste in the link (into Zoom chat) to the first onboarding Miro board - specifically the welcome/onboarding frame. (Note - if you use “incognito mode” in Chrome for example, you can load the Miro board frame link as if you are an ’anonymous editor’ -what they will be- and the view you demonstrate will more accurately reflect their UI/UX - e.g. Miro gives absolute first time users some pop up help windows that you will likely encourage them to close outright if you intend to conduct their Miro onboarding. 
 

Things covered in the on-boarding: I’ve found this order of priority to be most helpful  

-The window/screen management of setting up side by side windows so they can have view of 1) Miro 2) zoom in gallery mode to see their collaborators 3) zoom chat. (The ability to go back to zoom chat quickly is a lifeline for any stragglers who need to reach back out about Miro interface issues) 

-Navigation: intuitive understanding of “the board canvas” (moving the canvas moves you to a new vantage point - it moves everything on top of it… sits like moving to a new part of the table”- surprisingly some new-to-Miro people get flustered by this.   Zoom(scroll-based and mini-map), hand(pan), arrow moving of objects.  (People need navigation before object creation in my opinion. Otherwise it feels like playing on boats without learning to swim- fun at first but ultimately risky.)  I like to give a gently-paced, full tour preview, of any large, multi-frame boards: like standing a zoo tour group in front of a map of the zoo and pointing out our path for the day, and where the lions are. 

-Object creation → editing created objects → now get social → have fun with it → try other tools. 
 

Double check along the way that you’re getting the participation you hoped for. Learning new tools is a place that can quickly separate the quietly reserved and less-rapid-tech-adopting from the more rapid. In a big group training some people won’t feel comfortable saying they ‘ just didn’t understand how to make a sticky note.’ They’ll wait until the group exercises to bring it up and while they’ll probably be cross-taught at that point… it’s not a comfortable feeling for anyone to go through that, it distracts from the activity and worst of all, in my opinion, it opens an opportunity for the group to turn negative on Miro as a group, and doubt you and others who have thrust this uncomfortable and unproductive tool into their busy work lives. Getting everyone comfortable with absolute basics helps mitigate the momentum of this potential critique.

good luck and enjoy. 

It did look interesting. Bummer.

Hello,

I have just tried using Toasty - which did indeed seem like an answer to our prayers - and have just left the following message at the "live chat". Pity. ;-/

"Hello, I just wanted to let you know that, although I was initially very excited about your product, based on the "academy" videos, i found it definitely not ready for prime time... Buggy in almost every single feature I tried. Starting with something as simple as editing a session: every time i click on it, a "new" host appears (all me); trying to get to google drive kept giving me an "feature not available" error message; the session itself reverts to blank every time I leave it, losing all the planning; and finally, my attempt to chat with somebody led me here, where I get the information that you`ll be back online "later today", whenever that is. Toasty seems like an incredible idea, but it is definitely still in beta, and should be made available as such. Customer trust is a hard thing to get back, and it's my opinion that you are very much risking losing it with everyone that tests it as a finished product. "

Hi all,

Like to chip in here to see if it can help anyone.

If you’d like to use Miro with a whole group or in breakout, take a look at our platform called Toasty (https://toasty.ai/). We integrate with Miro and you can have everyone use it together in the main room or when everyone is in breakout - they always have access to the board and is only 1 click away.

Moving people from one breakout room to another breakout room won’t disconnect them as well. And you don’t need to screen share.

I hope this helps - and if you have any feedback, very happy to hear :)

Kevon

Co-founder & CEO of Toasty

Hi,

I think integrating is the way to go because being logged into two separate accounts is cumbersome and clunky.

I have been trying all day to integrate Miro and Zoom by using Zapier without success. I upgraded to a Pro Zoom but still can’t get it to work. It looked like it worked for a minute but I could never get the Miro function back when in Zoom.

Very frustrating and these companies have poor support, well I haven’t heard back from anyone yet.

If anyone has managed to make this work I’d love to hear how you did it.

Anastasis

Hi @Brian Kupersmit ,

I think it won’t take long till we’ve got a complete solution:

https://miro.com/workshops/

If you scroll down you’ll find this:

Can’t wait to see and feel how it works … and hopefully we can get a faster login for our invited clients.

Michael

Hi Kiron,

thats a good point.

Till now I never used zoom with its breakout meeting rooms - but I have seen serveral videos where zoom users tell the same like you did.

I will give it a try if I’m going to work with larger groups.

Thank you for sharing 

Michael