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Problem: Meeting Owner Cannot Have Concurrent Meetings in Zoom

This article applies to: Zoom

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Overview

For Zoom meetings, the meeting owner is the user who either schedules the meeting or has it scheduled on their behalf. The meeting owner also owns any cloud recording of the meeting.

Zoom does not allow users to own two or more meetings that occur at the same time. This situation might occur when a user schedules multiple meetings, some of which take place in the same or overlapping time slots.

While a meeting owner will not get warnings from Zoom about conflicts at the time that they schedule concurrent meetings, when the concurrent meeting is launched, the owner or alternative host starting it will see the warning message, "You have a meeting that is currently in progress." Zoom will then prompt the owner to close the meeting already running before they can start the next meeting. Doing this unfortunately ends the first session prematurely for all participants. 

To avoid this problem, users are advised to use Schedule Privilege when it's necessary for users to schedule meetings that others will own.

Be aware that assigning alternative hosts to Zoom meetings does not prevent this issue, since the scheduler in that case is still the owner of the meetings. The issue also still happens even when the meeting owner has not joined the concurrent meeting. 

Alternative hosts are best used when it's appropriate for the scheduler (owner) and all alternative hosts to participate in the session as hosts.

Using Schedule Privilege

The Schedule Privilege option allows a user to schedule a meeting on behalf of another Zoom user. That other Zoom user then owns the meeting.

When using this option, schedule privileges must first be granted to the scheduler. When the scheduler creates a meeting using this privilege, the owner role is given to the person on whose behalf the meeting is scheduled, not the scheduler.

  • To grant another user the privilege to schedule Zoom meetings on your behalf, follow the steps outlined in Setting Schedule Privilege on the Zoom website.
  • If another person has given you privileges to schedule Zoom meetings on their behalf, set up their meetings by following the steps outlined in Scheduling for another user on the Zoom website.
This option should be used when the scheduler needs to schedule concurrent meetings for other meeting owners and does not need to participate or have host rights in the Zoom meeting.

Wondering if you have schedule privileges to create meetings for another user, or if others have privileges to schedule meetings that you will own? To find out:

  1. Log in to the Cornell Zoom website
  2. Click Settings in the left-side menu
  3. Click Other.

In the section Schedule Privilege, you can see a list of the email addresses of those who can schedule for you and those you can schedule for. 

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