Best practices for hosting large meetings


Hosting meetings of up to 500 or 1000 participants can be challenging. Following some best practices before and during the meeting will ensure that the experience goes smoothly. Before hosting the meeting, you will need to enable the large meeting-add on.  

This article covers:

Prerequisites for hosting large meetings

How to prepare for a meeting

How to use waiting room

Admit a participant during a meeting

The meeting host can use the waiting room to admit specific participants, like speakers, into the meeting before everyone else. This can be helpful if you need to prepare before the meeting. The waiting room can also be customized. 

  1. As the meeting host, click Participants .
  2. In the Waiting Room section, click Admit next to a participant's name to allow them to join the meeting.

Admit all participants from the waiting room

The meeting host can admit all participants into the meeting once they are done with preparations. 

  1. As the meeting host, click Participants .
  2. Click Admit all.

Send messages to participants in the waiting room

The meeting host can send messages to waiting participants if preparation is taking longer than expected. 

  1. As the meeting host, click Chat .
  2. Click the dropdown next to To:
  3. Click Everyone (in Waiting Room).
  4. Enter and send your chat message to the Waiting Room.
    Once the message has been sent, the participants in the Waiting Room will see the message on the Waiting Room screen.

How to assign co-hosts to help manage the meeting

Assigning a co-host allows the host to share privileges with another user who can handle the administrative side of the meeting, such as managing participants, in-meeting chat, answering Q&A, or starting/stopping the recording. The host is the only user who can assign a co-host and there is no limitation on the number of co-hosts you can have in a meeting. Co-hosts do have some limitations. 

  1. While in the meeting, click Participants .
  2. Hover over the name of the participant who is going to be a co-host, and click More.
  3. Click Make Co-Host.

How to manage participants' audio

Mute all participants

The host or co-host can mute all participants that are already in the meeting, as well as new participants joining the meeting. This feature can be useful if you want to mute all participants during a presentation or discussion. 

  1. While in the meeting, click Participants  located in the meeting controls.
  2. Click Mute All.
  3. Click Mute All to mute all current and new participants. 
  4. (Optional) Check Allow participants to unmute themselves if you would like participants to be able to unmute at any time during the meeting.

Ask specific participants to unmute

The host or co-host can ask specific participants to unmute. This is useful if you would like your meeting's speakers to have control of their own audio, but not the rest of the participants. In this example, you would first need to mute all participants and prohibit them from unmuting. Ask the speakers to unmute afterwards. Once unmuted, the speakers can then mute or unmute at will. 

  1. While in the meeting, click Participants .
  2. Hover over the name of the participant you want to unmute, and click Ask to Unmute.
    The participant can agree to be unmuted and can now mute or unmute at will. If you mute everyone in the meeting again, this participant will also be affected. 

Ask all participants to unmute

The host and co-host can also request everyone in the meeting to unmute themselves. This can be useful if they have all been muted for a presentation, for example. By default, the participants are able to choose if they are ready to be unmuted after the request is sent. It is possible, however, for the host to unmute everyone if consent is given. 

  1. While in the meeting, click Participants  located in the meeting controls.
  2. Click More, then click Ask All to Unmute from the list.
    All other participants will then be prompted to Unmute or Stay Muted.

How to manage participants' videos and profile pictures

Stop a participant's video

This setting can be useful to prevent distracting or inappropriate images from being shown.

  1. While in the meeting, click Participants in the host controls to open the Participants panel.
  2. (Optional) Click the drop-down menu located at the top-left corner and click Pop Out to separate the Participants panel from the meeting window
  3. Hover over a participant and click More.
  4. Click Stop Video. If the participant hasn't started their video, you will see the Ask to Start Video option.

Hide profile pictures

This setting can be useful to prevent distracting or inappropriate images from being shown.

  1. While in the meeting, click Security .
  2. Click Hide Profile Pictures.
    All profile pictures will be hidden.

How to disable screen sharing for participants

If your meeting has too many participants trying to present, you can use this setting to prevent them from sharing. Learn more about controlling screen sharing permissions. 

  1. While in the meeting, find the controls toolbar, then click the upward arrow icon next to Share Screen .
  2. Click Advanced Sharing Options.
    A pop-up window will appear.
  3. Under Who can share, select Host Only.
    Only the host will be able to share their screen in this session.

How to manage chat for participants

Depending on the purpose of your meeting, you may want to restrict who participants can chat with during the session. For example, if you only permit participants to chat with the host and co-host, you will filter out the feedback other participants might send to public chat messages, and reduce the number of overall chat messages to review. 

  1. While in the meeting, click Chat in the meeting controls.
  2. Click the ellipses icon to display in-meeting chat settings.
  3. You can access the following options under Participant Can Chat With:
    • No one: Disables in-meeting chat.
    • Host and co-hosts: Only the host and co-host can send messages to everyone. Participants can still send private messages to the host.
    • Everyone: Participants can only send public messages. Public messages are visible to all participants. Participants can still send private messages to the host.
    • Everyone and anyone directly: Participants can send public or private messages. Public messages are visible to all participants. Private messages are sent to a specific participant, and are not visible to the host.

How to use meeting Q&A

The Q&A feature allows participants to ask questions during the meeting, which can be answered by the host and co-hosts privately or publicly. The questions can also be marked as something to be answered live. Q&A gives you an alternative to meeting chat, which has fewer options for managing submitted questions. To use this feature, you will need to enable it in the web portal before the meeting. 

Answer submitted questions

  1. While in the meeting, click Q&A in the meeting controls.
  2. Find the question you would like to answer: 
    • Click Answer Live to mark the question as something that will be answered out loud during the meeting.
    • Click Type Answer to provide a written response for the participant. Type your answer and click Send.
      Note: If you allow participants to comment on questions, the questions will still appear in the Open list and can be responded to, even if a participant has commented on the question.
    • (Optional) Select the Send Privately checkbox before clicking send. If you would like to answer to the participant only.

Dismiss questions

  1. While in the meeting, click Q&A  in the meeting controls.
  2. Hover over the question that you would like to dismiss and click the ellipsis icon .
  3. Tap Dismiss or Delete.
    Dismissed questions will no longer be visible to participants and moved to the Dismissed tab for the host and co-hosts, while deleted questions will be fully deleted and cannot be reopened.

How to spotlight participants

Spotlight video puts up to 9 participants as the primary active speakers for all participants, and participants will only see these speakers. Spotlighting can also be done during screen sharing. This feature is often used to spotlight a keynote speaker. 

  1. While in the meeting, hover over the video of the participant you want to spotlight and click the ellipsis icon . 
    Additional options for that participant are displayed. 
  2. Click Spotlight for Everyone.
  3. (Optional) To spotlight additional participants (up to 9 total), follow steps 2 and 3 again as needed, clicking on Add Spotlight instead. 

Cancel a Spotlight

  1. Click Remove Spotlight in the upper-left corner of the video area. 
    This will return the meeting to Speaker or Gallery view. 

How to manage raised hands

The raise hand feature allows meeting participants to indicate that they need something from the host, or co-host. As a host, it may be helpful to inform your participants how you would like to use this feature at the start of the meeting. For example, many hosts use this feature to know if an attendee has a question and would like to be unmuted to speak.

Hosts may also find that having large numbers of people raise their hands disrupts the meeting because it shuffles the participants' videos in the meeting layout. This problem can be solved by using a custom gallery view order.