Penn has signed a University-wide license agreement for Zoom virtual meeting software. All active University faculty, students, and staff are now eligible for centrally paid, full-function licenses. These licenses allow unlimited meetings with up to 300 participants. Meetings can last up to 24 hours.
In addition to the new license, the University has established a central Zoom service known as PennZoom. While the enterprise license covers eligible Penn affiliates campus-wide, some Schools, Centers, and units with existing Zoom contracts may choose to retain current procedures for their constituents. Users in those entities should contact their local support providers for guidance. Furthermore, if your organization is not participating in PennZoom, you won't be able to sign in at Penn's sign-in page (https://upenn.zoom.us) and will receive a message to contact your local IT group.
Please note: FERPA protections are in place. However, it does not carry a Penn HIPAA agreement, so the service is not intended for clinical use.
This page collects information about signing up for and using PennZoom.
In a web browser, sign in with your PennKey credentials at
or
Through the Zoom desktop or mobile client app, click Sign In with SSO, then enter upenn as the company domain.
This will automatically claim your license.
While it’s fine to use the web browser to sign in to Zoom to attend meetings, hosts of Zoom meetings are advised to use the desktop client app, which offers additional features and functions.
In a web browser, go to
and choose Join, Host, or Sign in. Use your PennKey credentials to complete the process.
or
Through the Zoom desktop or mobile client app, click Sign In with SSO, then enter upenn as the company domain.
As a user of PennZoom, use your PennKey and password to create a PennZoom account and to sign in any time.
Once signed into PennZoom, your Zoom user ID and Zoom email will be in the format of pennkey@upenn.edu where pennkey is your PennKey username.
How to find other PennZoom users
In order to contact or invite other PennZoom users to meetings, you will need to use their Zoom user ID, which will also be in the format of pennkey@upenn.edu.
You will also use pennkey@upenn.edu to access collaborative features, such as inviting other users to serve as alternative hosts, granting scheduling privileges, or pre-assigning users to breakout rooms.
If you can’t find a user in PennZoom
Zoom has been implemented in different ways across the University, and not all Schools and Centers have joined PennZoom. Users in Schools and Centers that have not yet moved to PennZoom will not be “findable” in https://upenn.zoom.us/.
You will be able to invite these users to meetings by using their email addresses. However, you will not be able to use several of Zoom’s collaborative features.
Webinar hosting, extra storage, and SIP calling are considered “add-on” accounts under the Zoom enterprise license and incur a charge-back fee. Contact your local IT support provider for assistance.
Existing meeting links created at Penn prior to joining PennZoom will continue to work. However, if you need to make any changes (such as inviting another participant) to one of those meetings, you must create a new meeting to replace it. The act of saving the change will break the old link.
If you have designated alternative hosts or delegated access privileges for meetings created in another Zoom account, those individuals will need to be re-invited.
Your personal meeting ID (PMI), upcoming meetings, and existing recordings remain available at their old links. Note that new meetings and recordings created in PennZoom have a slightly different address format.
Zoom has been implemented differently by individual Schools and centers at Penn. This inconsistency has created obstacles to collaboration and interoperability. A first step to address these issues was the negotiation of an enterprise license to ensure that all students, faculty, and staff could receive centrally paid Zoom access.
ISC has launched this central Zoom service known as PennZoom, in which any School, Center, or administrative unit may participate by moving its existing Zoom user accounts. With PennZoom, it's simpler for users to participate in meetings across groups, to collaborate in other ways, and to create and sign in to their accounts. Integration with learning technologies and other enhancements will also be facilitated. Most Schools have already made the transition to PennZoom, and many Centers are scheduled to do so. Some Schools and units may continue to maintain independent Zoom operations due to their specific requirements.
All active University students, faculty, and staff are eligible. This includes postdocs, unpaid affiliates with active academic appointments, emeritus faculty, temporary and contingent workers, including student workers, and service providers. If in doubt, contact your local IT support provider for assistance.
Zoom user accounts established with a School, Center, or unit not participating in PennZoom service will use an address specific to that organization.
Zoom changed waiting room and passcode requirements as of September 27, 2020. This change applies to all Zoom accounts and is not related to Penn’s new license or PennZoom. See the following support article from Zoom:
PennZoom accounts have a series of Penn-branded, custom backgrounds available to them. These include backgrounds branded with the Penn logo, as well as a number of photos of locations on campus. Users can access these backgrounds under Virtual Backgrounds in their Zoom client. Users must keep their Zoom client up to date to access Penn-branded backgrounds.
Zoom has put a new policy in place to prevent users from falling too far behind on features and bug fixes. As of November 1, 2021, users will be asked to update their Zoom client if they are more than 9 months behind the current version. In several schools and centers, your Zoom client version is managed for you, so contact your local IT support provider for assistance.
https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362233-Upgrade-update-to-th...
The PennZoom service includes access to Zoom Cloud Recording, which allows PennZoom users the ability to record meetings and store recordings and transcripts in Zoom's cloud. PennZoom stores these recordings for 120 days, after which time they will be deleted. For this reason, PennZoom users should download and store their recordings outside of Zoom's cloud.
PennZoom classroom recordings initiated from within Canvas will continue to automatically be moved into Panopto for long-term storage. Classroom recordings initiated directly from Zoom can be manually imported into Panopto for long-term storage.
https://www.isc.upenn.edu/how-to/pennzoom-cloud-recording-management
Please consult the Zoom AI Companion Guidance and Penn's AI Guidance pages for important considerations before using Zoom AI Companion.
Meetings
The complete list of AI companion features can be found here. Please note that not all features on Zoom’s page are available within Penn’s environment.
- Meeting Summary - Generate a summary and next steps of what was discussed in your meetings and share through email and Team Chat.
- In-Meeting Questions - Quickly catch up and clarify what you missed during a meeting without interrupting it.
- Smart Recording - Review cloud recordings faster through highlights, smart chapters, summaries, and next steps, and get analytics on key meeting and conversation factors.
Whiteboard
- Content generation - Generate ideas, refine and extend existing content, and add objects to a canvas.
Team Chat
- Chat Compose - Draft messages based on conversational context and what you want to say, as well as customize its tone and length.
- Thread Summary - Quickly summarize the content of long Team Chat threads.
- Quick Scheduling - Easily schedule meetings based on conversation context.
- Sentence Completion - Quickly complete messages by accepting suggestions as they appear in real time as you type.
Zoom Events
Zoom Events is a specific product offered by Zoom via an add-on license. It is a distinct product from meetings and webinars.
- Smart Compose - Write compelling event content when setting up an event including event description, session descriptions, speaker bios, lobby announcements, images, and more.
- Image generation - Generate unique images to use in your event.
- Email Compose - Generate an email, subject lines, titles, and calls to action, using context from your Zoom Event description and/or providing a more specific prompt.
- Chat Compose - Draft chat messages for your Lobby chat based on conversational context and what you want to say, as well as customize the tone and length.
The Zoom AI Companion features will be available on June 20 at 8 am. They are disabled by default, so you will need to go into your account to turn them on for your use. The AI Companion features will not be available in meetings you host until you follow these steps.
- Open a web browser and log into Zoom.
- On the left side, click Settings.
- Click the AI Companion tab on the top.
- Click the switch to the right of each feature you want to enable. The switch will move to the right and turn blue when the feature is enabled.
AI Companion features follow the host’s settings. You cannot turn on AI Companion features in a meeting you are not hosting.
- Schedule a meeting as you normally would.
- Start the meeting as host.
- On the bottom bar, click the AI Companion button. You may turn on features individually by clicking each or clicking on Turn on all.
- Meeting Summaries will be emailed to the host shortly after the end of the meeting.
- To turn off the AI Companion features, click the AI Companion button, then click Turn off. A pop-up will open. Click the red Turn off button.
- Additionally, you may immediately delete meeting assets by checking the box before clicking Turn off. If you don’t click this checkbox, Zoom may retain meeting assets for up to 30 days. By deleting the meeting assets, you will not receive a Meeting Summary.
Please see these articles for Penn’s guidance on the use of AI.