How to Host a Zoom Meeting in a Crestron Trimodal Room


How to Host a Zoom Meeting in a Crestron Trimodal Room

The purpose of this article is to explain the steps necessary to conduct a Zoom meeting in a Trimodal COL Room containing a Crestron system.

Important: This article applies only to rooms with Crestron systems. For rooms with a Q-SYS system, view this article.

Note: Some non-trimodal rooms with a Crestron system have Zoom functionality; others do not. Take some time to familiarize yourself with the capabilities of the room you will be lecturing in.

There are two ways of conducting a Zoom meeting from a Crestron System. These are:

  1. Creating a Zoom Instant Meeting
  2. Connecting to a scheduled or in-progress meeting.

Both of these will be discussed in detail below. Please scroll to the set of instructions that best describes your use case.

Not Sure Which Applies To You?

Generally speaking, an Instant Meeting is recommended if you cannot create a meeting in, and do not have access to, the Zoom.us web portal, or do not need to inform remote users in advance of the invite link and do not plan for the meeting to recur. We recommend that you use scheduled meetings in all other cases.

Creating a Zoom Instant Meeting

A Zoom Instant Meeting is created on the Crestron Touch Panel at the time of the meeting. When you arrive in the classroom, an instant meeting may already be running. If not, touch the New Meeting button to create an Instant Meeting. If asked to enter a display name, press "SKIP". The meeting is now in progress.

Inviting Students to Your Meeting

To allow students to join your meeting, you must give them the Meeting ID and passcode. Some meetings also require students to log in to Zoom with their DePaul BlueKey credentials. To view the Meeting ID and passcode, push the small green check mark in the upper left corner of the Touch Panel's screen. A window will appear showing the Instant Meeting's ID and passcode.

Joining a Scheduled or In-Progress Meeting

If you created a scheduled meeting, you can find the Meeting ID and passcode on the Zoom.us web portal by navigating to the Meetings directory, clicking the name of the meeting, and then clicking "Show" next to "Passcode" in the Details tab. If you already provided this information to your students by E-Mail, D2L, or another method, you do not need to do so again. To join the meeting, press the "Join" button, then enter the Meeting ID. Enter the passcode if prompted. If asked to enter a display name, press "SKIP".

In some meetings, the Crestron panel must be the host to be able to share the whiteboard or the screen of the Instruction Computer. The panel will be the meeting host if it is the first user to join the meeting, and no user explicitly designated as the host is connected. For this reason, it is important that you join the meeting first, before other students.

Determining What is Visible to Students in the Meeting

The Zoom application typically records only one video feed, which is determined by the person who is speaking, and by your selections on the Crestron Touch Panel. To determine what is shown while you are speaking over the room's microphone:

1. Decide whether you want the Instruction Computer screen to display, or not.

If the "Share Content" button is red, the Instruction Computer's screen is being presented to the meeting. If it is green, a camera, or the Kaptivo (whiteboard), is being displayed. To change this setting, press the "Share Content" button, and then press the blue "Share to Meeting" button in the confirmation window. If you want a camera or Kaptivo to display, proceed to Step 2. You can change this setting as many times as needed throughout the meeting.


The image on the left indicates no screen share is in progress. The image on the right indicates a screen share is in progress.

Push the blue "Share to Meeting" button to start the screen share.

2. Determine which camera should be displayed

Trimodal rooms most typically have two cameras, and a Kaptivo sensor (which is considered by the Crestron system to be a camera). To change the camera in use, first make sure that you are not sharing the Instruction Computer screen, as described above, then touch the "Switch Camera" button. You can then select one of three cameras:

1. Instructor Camera: the most commonly-used camera, situated at the back of the room and focused on the front of the room.

2. Classroom Camera: situated at the front of the room, used to look at the student desks in the front, center, and back of the room.

3. Kaptivo: used to display the content being captured by the Kaptivo whiteboard sensor.

In some cases, you can present multiple cameras using the "multi-view" option.

Enabling Host Functionality on the Touch Panel

In order to enable all of the functions of the meeting you are in, the Touch Panel needs to be the host. The Zoom application automatically assigns host privileges to the account who created the meeting, once that account joins. However, if this account is not connected (like when you are in a Zoom Room), the software will instead designate the first user to connect to the meeting as the interim host. If the meeting creator later joins on their account, the system will transfer host privileges to that user automatically.

If you joined the Zoom Room after other students have already connected, it is likely that one of these students will be the interim host. To rectify this, you must use the Host Key to manually take control of the meeting. To find your host key, consult this article about viewing and editing meetings and host keys.

To take over host of a room, touch Participants, then touch Claim Host.

If the Instruction Computer Monitor Does Not Display on the Projector

When you start the Zoom meeting, the projector may begin to show a video feed from the room's camera. If this occurs, select the "View" button on the Touch Panel, and then touch the switch next to "Show Content Only". The projector then displays the feed from the Instruction Computer.

Ending the Meeting

At the conclusion of your lecture, you need to disconnect the room from the meeting. To do this, press the red "END" button. You then have two options to disconnect:

"Leave Meeting" disconnects the room from the meeting, but allows other users to remain connected.

"End Meeting For All" forces all users to disconnect from the meeting. If the Touch Panel is not the meeting's host, this option will not be displayed.


If you have additional questions please email the COL team, or for immediate support call the COL office.

Email: COL@cdm.depaul.edu

Classroom Phone Extension: 26200