Learn to successfully manage your audience’s audio and video when hosting your next Zoom
Meeting or Webinar. Hosts can begin managing participant audio and video
when scheduling a meeting or webinar. First, scroll below the event details to the Video menu.
Select if the host and participants or host and panelists may begin with their video on or off.
If you select On, participants or panelists will have the choice to have their video on or off
when they’re joining. If you select Off, participants or panelists will enter with their
video off. In Meetings, participants may choose to turn it on after it starts. In webinars, the host
or co-host will need to allow panelists to start video if they select this option. For a webinar,
there are a few more ways hosts can manage video when scheduling.
Scroll a little further below when scheduling a meeting, and you’ll see hosts can choose to Mute
participants upon entry. This is a great option to minimize sound disruptions as participants
trickle into the meeting. Remember, in a webinar, only the host and panelists can use audio by
default so this selection won’t be available. The audio and video options we just covered
can also be configured in your account settings for all meetings. Go to Settings,
then Schedule Meeting. If either option is enabled or disabled here, it will be the
default for any new meeting moving forward but can be changed when scheduling an individual meeting.
Once in the meeting, you have several options for managing participant audio
and video. Click the Participants icon and then the More dropdown in the bottom right corner.
Here you can: Ask all to unmute; all participants will see a dialogue box giving them a choice to
unmute. Mute all upon entry; they’ll still be able to unmute after the meeting starts.
Allow participants to unmute themselves; when deselected, participants will not be able to
come off of mute and speak in the meeting. Allow participants to start video; when deselected,
participants will not be able to turn their cameras on and be seen in the meeting.
Only their profile image will be shown if they have one, or simply their name or initials if not.
You can access a few of these options from the Security menu. Additionally, here you may select
Hide profile pictures, which will revert all participant profile images to initials onscreen.
Before we leave this view, take note of a few more options that may be of interest to you.
For example, allow participants to rename themselves or not. You may also manage
audio and video at the individual level from the Participants menu.
Hover over the name of any participant, and you’ll see the option to mute them if they’re currently
unmuted or ask them to unmute if they’re currently muted. Or, select More to stop their video or ask
them to start video, respectively. You can manage several other individual participant options here.
Note that, like before, some of these participant options can be
configured in your account settings. By default, webinar attendees are in listen
and view-only mode and can’t use their own audio or video. However, speaking permission
can be granted by the host or a co-host. From the Participants menu under Attendees,
hover over any name and click Allow to talk. Once permission is granted,
hover over their name again to mute them or ask them to unmute, respectively.
Or, revoke speaking privileges by clicking More, then Disable talking.
Only the host and panelists may use video in a webinar, so to grant privileges to an attendee,
they must be promoted to a panelist. You’ll see this option in the More menu. Now they may start
and stop video and audio freely. To reverse this action, click Change role to attendee.
Well, that’s all I’ve got to say for now!