Through OrigamiUSA’s Zoom room for Community Origami Groups (COGs) you can schedule a Zoom meeting for your origami group for 1, 2, or 3 hours, for up to 100 attendees. You do not need to be a member of OrigamiUSA to use this resource, nor does your Community Group need to be part of OrigamiUSA; but the host of a meeting needs to have a user account on this website. If you don’t already have an account, you can register for one here.

If you have questions, please email us at cogs-online [at] origamiusa.org.

On this page:

On separate pages:

Zoom itself has a "how to join a Zoom meeting" video (and you'll find many others in the sidebar to that page). If you'd rather read at your own speed, check out our own instructional links:

Scheduling the Zoom Room

Before you begin: Note that you cannot schedule a meeting sooner than 4 hours from the present. Please plan (a little) ahead!

Example: Setting up a 1-hour COG Meeting

Let’s begin with an example of setting up a 1-hour-long meeting. Go to the meeting scheduler page.

If you’re not already logged into your OrigamiUSA website account, you’ll need to do so via the link at the bottom of the page that says “Please login to see the schedule and calendar”.

Once logged in, you’ll see a calendar at the bottom of the page. Right above it is a link that says: “Schedule a COG Meeting”. Select that link to bring you to this pop-up screen:

In this example, we will choose a 1 Hour COG meeting by selecting that button; choose your own desired length. This brings you to this screen where we will choose March 31 for our meeting:

On the next screen we will choose the start time of our meeting:

Note that the times start with 12:00 AM (that is, midnight) and it shows your Time Zone (in the example, it is set to US Eastern Time.) Make sure your time zone is set appropriately for your needs!

You will probably need to scroll down to find the start time that you want:

We will select 7 pm for the start time of the meeting.

And select confirm to set up the meeting.

Now we can enter some details about the meeting–the meeting host’s name and email address are required, and you can add notes if there is anything you’d like attendees to know in advance, for example “Have 6” kami paper available.”:

Select “Schedule Event” and you will see this pop-up:

Your meeting has been scheduled! Yay! Note that you DO NOT have to put in your email address or select “Try it now!” here; this is an advertisement for Calendy, the system OrigamiUSA is using to power the scheduling.

At this point, you can dismiss the scheduler by clicking the X in the upper right corner of the grayed-out area of the screen, circled here:

To see your event on the website calendar, you should refresh/reload the page in your browser (Command-R on Mac, Control-R on Windows).

In our example, the calendar now shows that 7pm on March 31 is listed as “busy”.

What happens next?

You will receive an email from “COGs Online Calendar (via Calendly)” <notifications [at] calendly.com>. This email will have all the information about your meeting, including the link that you can send to your attendees. Do not forward this email to others unaltered—you'll see why in a moment.

Do not reply to emails from notifications [at] calendly.com, for questions please email cogs-online [at] origamiusa.org.

For our 1-hour example on March 31st, the email looked like this:

If you scroll down in the email, you will see that you have some more options. For example, you can add this meeting to your own Google or Outlook calendar by clicking on one of the blue buttons:

You can forward this email to your meeting attendees to give them all the details for connecting, including the all-important Zoom link, as well the buttons near the bottom of the email to add it to their calendar. However, at the very bottom you will see two rectangular buttons:

These buttons allow the meeting to be changed. If you forward this email to your participants, you should select and delete these buttons from the email before sending. Otherwise, someone might inadvertantly (or intentionally) change or cancel the meeting. You can use these buttons in your own email to change it; see the next section of this documentation.

If you are happy with your meeting date/time, you are done! Enjoy your meeting with your folding friends.

Rescheduling the Meeting

Rescheduling will only allow you to change the meeting time and/or date, but not length. If you want to change the length of the meeting (e.g. instead of a 1-hour meeting, you would like a 2-hour meeting) then you need to cancel your “1 Hour COG Meeting” and create a new “2 Hour COG meeting”. Cancellation instructions are below; after cancelling, you can start over from the beginning. (You'll need to cancel before rescheduling to free up the time slot.)

Rescheduling Your Meeting Time and/or Date

The example we will use here is rescheduling a meeting to be on April 1 at 8 pm instead of March 31 at 7 pm.

When you scheduled your meeting, you received a confirmation from “COGs Online Calendar (via Calendly)” <notifications [at] calendly.com>. Open the email from the meeting you wish to cancel and scroll to the bottom and click on the button that says “Reschedule.”

Note: This is the only way to reschedule or cancel your event. If you have problems, please contact us at cogs-online [at] origamiusa.org.

Clicking on the “Reschedule” button in your email will bring you back to this screen:

Follow the same steps as before, but this time choosing April 1 for the date and 8pm as the start time.

Confirm the 8 pm time and it will bring you here:

You can enter the reason for the day and time change and click “Update Event”. That will bring you to this screen:

If you click on “Add to your calendar” it will also update your Google or Outlook calendar.

You can close this tab in your browser, or dismiss the popup by clicking the white X in the upper right corner of the grayed-out region. Note that you DO NOT have to put in your email address or select “Try it now!” here; that is an advertisement for Calendy, the system OrigamiUSA is using to power the scheduling.

You will receive another email from “COGs Online Calendar (via Calendly)” <notifications [at] calendly.com> with your new meeting day and time information.

Do not reply to emails from notifications [at] calendly.com, for questions please email cogs-online [at] origamiusa.org.

IMPORTANT: If you have rescheduled, your meeting link will have changed and you need to send the new link to your attendees! If you are forwarding the confirmation email, make sure you delete the reschedule and cancel buttons from the email before you forward it.

Here is an example of what would be in the new email after rescheduling. Note that the meeting number is different from the original meeting number in the March 31 meeting email.

Cancelling the Meeting

When you scheduled your meeting, you received a confirmation from “COGs Online Calendar (via Calendly)” <notifications [at] calendly.com>. Open the email from the meeting you wish to cancel and scroll to the bottom and click on the button that says “Cancel.”

In the example we will use here, we will cancel the meeting we just rescheduled, so we need to open the NEW email that we received for the meeting at April 1 at 8 pm. In general, you need to use the latest Calendly email received; the original meeting for March 31 is gone.

When you click on Cancel, you will get the following screen. Enter the reason for cancelling and select “Cancel Event”:

You will get this screen in a new tab.

And your meeting is cancelled. The previous link(s) to the meeting you received in any emails will be invalid. You will not get any email confirming the cancellation. Of course, make sure you inform anyone you sent the original meeting link to of the cancellation.

For any questions contact us at cogs-online [at] origamiusa.org. Happy Folding!