Overview

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Learn all the Zoom features available to manage your attendees and take control of your meeting safely and efficiently.

Manage Your Participants

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Here are some other features to help secure your Zoom event and host with confidence:

• Allow only signed-in users to join: If someone tries to join your event and isn’t logged into Zoom with the email they were invited through, they will receive this message
  
  
  
  This is useful if you want to control your guest list and invite only those you want at your event — other students at your school or colleagues, for example. This may have a negative effect if you are expecting guests who have never signed up for a Zoom account.
  
  
• Lock the meeting: It’s always smart to lock your front door, even when you’re inside the house. When you lock a Zoom Meeting that’s already started, no new participants can join, even if they have the meeting ID and password (if you have required one).
  
  1. In the meeting, click Participants at the bottom of your Zoom window.
  2. In the Participants pop-up, click the button that says Lock Meeting.
     
     
• Set up your own two-factor authentication: You don’t have to share the actual meeting link! Generate a random Meeting ID when scheduling your event and require a password to join. Then you can share that Meeting ID on Twitter but only send the password to join via DM.
  
  
• Remove unwanted or disruptive participants: From that Participants menu, you can mouse over a participant’s name, and several options will appear, including Remove. Click that to kick someone out of the meeting.
  
  
• Allow removed participants to rejoin: When you do remove someone, they can’t rejoin the meeting. But you can toggle your settings to allow removed participants to rejoin, in case you boot the wrong person.
  
  
• Put them on hold: You can put everyone else on hold, and the attendees’ video and audio connections will be disabled momentarily.
  
  1. Click on someone’s video thumbnail and select Start Attendee On Hold to activate this feature.
  2. Click Take Off Hold in the Participants list when you’re ready to have them back.
     
     
• Disable video: Hosts can turn someone’s video off. This will allow hosts to block unwanted, distracting, or inappropriate gestures on video or for that time your friend’s inside pocket is the star of the show.
  
  
• Mute participants: Hosts can mute/unmute individual participants or all of them at once. Hosts can block unwanted, distracting, or inappropriate noise from other participants. You can also enable Mute Upon Entry in your settings to keep the clamor at bay in large meetings.
  
  • Hosts can also turn off the ability for a participant to unmute themselves.
  • Also refer to:
    
    • Managing Participants in a Webinar
    • Muting and Unmuting Participants in a Meeting
      
      
• Turn off file transfer: In-meeting file transfer allows people to share files through the in-meeting chat. Toggle this off to keep the chat from getting bombarded with unsolicited pics, GIFs, memes, and other content.
  
  
• Turn off annotation: You and your attendees can doodle and mark up content together using annotations during screen share. You can disable the annotation feature in your Zoom settings to prevent people from writing all over the screens.
  
  
• Disable private chat: Zoom has in-meeting chat for everyone or participants can message each other privately. Restrict participants’ ability to chat amongst one another while your event is going on and cut back on distractions. This is really to prevent anyone from getting unwanted messages during the meeting.
  
  
• Adding an Alternative or Co-Host to a Zoom: You are able to set an alternative host or co-host to help manage your meeting. 

Waiting Room 

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One of the best ways to use Zoom for public events is to enable the Waiting Room feature. Just like it sounds, the Waiting Room is a virtual staging area that stops your guests from joining until you’re ready for them. It’s almost like the velvet rope outside a nightclub, with you as the bouncer carefully monitoring who gets let in.

Meeting hosts can customize Waiting Room settings for additional control, and you can even personalize the message people see when they hit the Waiting Room so they know they’re in the right spot. This message is really a great spot to post any rules/guidelines for your event, like who it’s intended for.

The Waiting Room is really a great way to screen who’s trying to enter your event and keep unwanted guests out.