If your organization includes Zoom Rooms that are spread among a variety of locations, the account owner can establish a hierarchical structure to help manage them more effectively. Depending on the needs of your organization, you can specify a location for a Zoom Room that includes its Country, City, Campus, Building, and Floor. The account owner or Zoom Room administrator can manage settings for a single Zoom Room, all Zoom Rooms in the organization, or anything in between.

This article covers:

• How to design a hierarchical structure
• Understanding the inheritance of settings
• How to create a Zoom Room hierarchy

Prerequisites for using Zoom Rooms location hierarchy

• Account owner

How to design a hierarchical structure

An account owner can design a hierarchy to define the locations of all Zoom Rooms. The account owner or designated Zoom Room administrators can also configure different settings at each level of this hierarchy.

• The highest level of the hierarchy is your account, where the account owner defines default settings that can be used in all Zoom Rooms.
• The intermediate levels of the hierarchy are Country, City, Campus, Building, and Floor. The account owner or Zoom Room administrator can define any or all of these levels to be in the hierarchy, depending on the needs of your organization. Use these intermediate levels to configure common settings for groups of Zoom Rooms.
• The lowest level of the hierarchy is the individual Zoom Room. The account owner, Zoom Room administrator, or the room owner can configure each Zoom Room with settings unique to that room, or the room can inherit the characteristics from any level above it in the hierarchy.

For example, suppose an organization named mycompany.com is located in two buildings that each have two floors, and each floor has two Zoom Rooms. The account owner creates a hierarchical structure by enabling the Building and the Floor locations of the hierarchy. Within the Building location, the account owner adds BuildingA and BuildingB. Within the Floor location for BuildingA, the account owner or a Zoom Room administrator adds FloorA1, and FloorA2, and within FloorA1, adds  ZoomRoomA1Alpha and ZoomRoomA1Beta. A parallel hierarchy for BuildingB is also added. This hierarchy of Zoom Rooms at mycompany.com looks like this:

• BuildingA
  • FloorA1 
    • ZoomRoomA1Alpha
    • ZoomRoomA1Beta
  • FloorA2
    • ZoomRoomA2Alpha
    • ZoomRoomA2Beta
• BuildingB
  • Floor B1 
    • ZoomRoomB1Alpha
    • ZoomRoomB1Beta
  • FloorB2
    • ZoomRoomB2Alpha
    • ZoomRoomB2Beta

Understanding the inheritance of settings

If you do not change the settings for any intermediate levels in the hierarchy, all rooms inherit the mycompany.com account settings. This works well for a small number of rooms managed by a single person. For example, say that the value of the Support Email setting at the account level is set to support@mycompany.com, because all rooms use the same support engineer. But suppose that BuildingA hires its own support engineer whose email is support_buildingA@mycompany.com. You could individually configure the Support Email value for each of the 4 rooms in BuildingA. Alternatively, though, you could configure the Support Email value one time by changing it at value at the Building level. Each room in the building, would then automatically inherit this change.

In this example, the Zoom Room administrator would edit the settings for BuildingA so that the value for the Support Email setting is support_buildingA@mycompany.com. Both FloorA1 and FloorA2, as well as all 4 rooms in BuildingA, inherit the Support Email value of support_buildingA@mycompany.com. The 4 rooms in BuildingB would continue to use support@mycompany.com, the value at the account level.

How to create a Zoom Room hierarchy

Only the account owner can create the initial hierarchy. After the hierarchy is established, Zoom Room administrators can modify it. To create a Zoom room hierarchy:

1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal as the account owner.
2. In the left navigation menu, click Room Management then Zoom Rooms.
3. To the right of Location Directory, click Edit.
   The Add Location page will open.
4. Choose the locations that you need for your organization.
   In this example, the mycompany.com organization has only one campus and only needs to enable Building and Floor. As you choose locations in the left pane, you can see the preview of the structure in the right pane.
5. Click the Save button when your structure looks correct.
   The Zoom Rooms tab will display a new Location Directory pane, as well as a set of tabs for Devices, Rooms, Floors, and Buildings. One building and one floor will be automatically added. Note: You can rename these structures and add new ones within the hierarchy.
6. Click the name of a building then click Building Settings.
7. Click the Buildings Profile tab.
8. Under Basic, change the Building Name by clicking the pencil icon .
9. Under Basic, make any changes that you want for all rooms in this building. 
10. Click Save, then click the X at the top right corner of the page to exit.
11. Repeat Steps 6-11 to continue adding and modifying structures to each location in your hierarchy.  

Note: To add a structure, click the tab with the structure type, then click the Add Building button (or the Add button for another type of structure).