Hosting a Zoom Meeting Like a Webinar

There are ways to manage your Zoom meeting like a webinar without paying for a webinar license while also providing better security for your meeting. 

Tips for webinar style meetings

• Don’t publicize Zoom links or Passcodes.

  • The more people who know the link to your meeting, the greater the likelihood of it being shared with intruders.

• Don't use your Personal Meeting ID for public meetings.

  • Once someone knows your Personal Meeting ID, they can try joining your sessions at any moment. Never share your Personal Meeting ID online, and only use it for meetings with people you know.

• Divide Up Responsibilities.

  • If there are two hosts in a meeting, designate one person as being responsible for technical aspects, such as admitting users to the meeting, removing users, or documenting what happens in case of a “Zoombombing” incident.

Pre-Meeting Controls

Limiting participant and attendee controls needs to be done prior to the meeting. Log into your Zoom Account and run through the following check list of meeting control settings.

• When scheduling a Zoom meeting, use the "WVU-only participants option" 

  • This will require participants to log into Zoom with their WVU Login credentials by clicking the Login with SSO button. 

• When scheduling a Zoom meeting, select Off for participant video.

  • This will ensure that the participant's videos will be disabled when they join your meeting. During the meeting, as Host you can ask a participant to start their video using the “Manage Participants” in-meeting icon at the bottom.

• Set a passcode for your meeting.

• Enable a waiting room.

• Require registration through Zoom.

• Disable chat and private chat.

• Disable Annotation. 

  • Disabling this setting does not allow any participants from interacting with any data that is being shared by a Host of Co-Host. This is important as it also prevents unwanted attendees from drawing or writing inappropriate things on your data.

• Disable File Sharing. 

  • Disabling this setting prevents participants from posting inappropriate images into the Chat section, which can be very disruptive.

In Meeting Controls

• Lock The Meeting.

  • The Zoom Host Controls allow the host or co-host to lock the meeting once the expected participants have joined.

• Mute All Participants.

  • When clicking Mute All, viewable when the Manage Participants button is clicked in the Zoom toolbar, you can Mute all participants that are in the session and that will join the session at some point.

  • This checkbox is important as it prevents participants from unmuting at any time.

  • The Co-Hosts can unmute themselves after this step and all Hosts can unmute any participants that they would like to permit to speak in the meeting.

  • To do this: Click Mute All, then un-check the "Allow participants to Unmute Themselves," click Continue.

• Screen Sharing for Host Only.

  • This prevents participants from sharing their screen at any time during the meeting.Only Hosts and Co-Hosts can share when this is enabled. This also prevents unwanted attendees from sharing inappropriate content.

  • Do not enable screen sharing for participants if you have a public event. If someone needs to screen share, promote them to Co-Host so they can share, then demote them to participant when they are done.Enabling Screen Share for Participants opens the door to permit sharing, which is uncontrolled.

  • To do this: In the Zoom toolbar next to "Share Screen", click the Up Arrow, click Advanced Options and click Host Only for screen sharing.

• Set Chat to Host Only.

  • This is a dual-purpose setting. In a webinar, the Q&A portion is private, and participant questions are only visible to the Host.Change this setting to prevent all chat messages from being public to mimic the Q&A capability.Also, for meeting security, the chat can be used inappropriately by unwanted attendees to display foul and disrespectful language that would be visible to everyone. This is more appropriate for a publicly accessible meeting, however it is always relevant.

  • Co-Hosts cannot see the chat messages, only the Host of the meeting can.

  • To do this: Click on Chat in the Zoom toolbar, click the three dots (...) in the lower right corner of the chat window and Click Host Only.

Video Control Tips

This is where the Zoom meeting has control limitations.If video from participants needs to be managed, here are some used tips:

• Clarify in the meeting invitations to participants that they should Mute their video.

• Set Participant Video to Off when scheduling a meeting.

• Announce in the meeting that everyone should turn their video off.

• Hosts and Co-Hosts can disable video for individual participants as needed by moving the mouse over the participants name, click More and then Stop Video.

• For large meetings, this can be a challenge, so having others to help manage participant video is recommended.