How do I set meeting so HOST has control of mute/unmute participants?

[sschuyler94704]

I have seen in a recent meeting I have gone to where ALL participants are muted and the participants use the RAISE HAND function to indicate they want to speak and the HOST has total control of giving a person permission to unmute so that no other people can accidently unmute or stay unmute and cause a disturbance to the meeting. Then when the person is done, the HOST can mute them again.

I am just wondering how to set that up?

[ccameron]

Hello,

The help article below will walk you through the steps of managing attendee's mute/unmute:
https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/360060860512-Muting-all-participants-when-they-join-a-meet...

For the hand raise portion, the below article will take you through enabling and management of those options:
https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115001286183

If this answers your question, please click accept as solution. Thank you!

[sschuyler94704]

Maybe I am not understanding the article on muting/unmuting that you referred to, but, it talks about how to mute people when they enter a meeting. We know how to do that.

What I am talking about is, when it is time for ONE person to be unmuted so they can talk, the HOST granted that ONE person the ability to unmute themselves, but no one else had permission to unmute themself.

That person had 3 minutes to talk. Then, when their time was up, the HOST muted them and took that person's permission to unmute themself away and went to the next person and repeated this. That way, only that ONE person could talk and no other person could unmute themself either on purpose or by accident.

Unless I am not reading it right, the article you provided does not offer instuctions on how to set up that type of control by the HOST.

Am I misunderstanding this article?

[ccameron]

Hello,

When a meeting is launched, you can click the participant's tab, then the 3 dot ellipses to give you this option. Photo attached. 

With the attendees no longer having the option to un-mute themselves, the host and co-host can grant those permissions. Articles below will walk you through participant management & unmuting.
https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115005759423-Managing-participants-in-a-meeting#h_135deff0...

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/203435537-Muting-unmuting-participants-in-a-meeting#h_01EG...

If this answers your question, please click accept as solution. Thank you!

[ZoomTestKitchen]

I manage a 900+ participants meeting and audio management is critical. When I setup and initially configure the meeting I select "Mute Participants Upon Entry" and also "Don't Allow Participants to Unmute". Now when they arrive they are muted and they cannot unmute themselves without an invitation from the host to do so.

Then when the meeting speaker is ready for questions she invites them to raise their digital hand. This is then the order of management...

1. With my mouse I click on "Request to Unmute" on the participant I'm about to Spotlight next to the meeting speaker.
2. I then Spotlight them. The timing is usually pretty good sending the request first and then spotlighting. It gives them that moment to accept my request, and unmute. And because I (the Host) invited them to unmute, there is no need to change Unmute permissions for everybody in the meeting, which can be a disaster.
3. Then after they are finished speaking I mute them, lower their hand, and remove the spotlight.

Notes:

1. There is not a way to grant unmute permissions to a single participant outside of sending the request to unmute.
2. When creating a meeting you can select in options - "Request permission to unmute participants". This will prompt users upon logging-in to grant you the host the ability to unmute them without the request. But, if they don't allow this to the host, then you'll have to send the request to some, and the right unmute others.

[sschuyler94704]

Thank You! I am grateful to you for taking your valuable time to offer this answer. It helps a lot!

We have had both ZOOM bombers as well as some participants not muting themselves when they are done and we end up getting background noises from their home environments.

One person has pet birds, so when she does not mute herslf we get parots talking during the meeting! How fun is that? Or, people talking about their personal business with their wife, husband or roomates and not realizibng they forgot to mute themselve when they were done talking to the meeting participants or accidently unmuted themselves. So, we hear all about the balance in their checkbook and what bills they have to pay that month!

Of course, the leader of the meeting cuts them off right away when this starts, but, my point is, these are the kinds of things people talk about when they think they are muted and not noticing that they are not and we can all hear them!

Annoying but kinda funny at the same time!

[ZoomTestKitchen]

Never fun, but the good news is that it is almost always avoidable if planned and managed well.

Good luck!

If you found this information helpful, please click on "Accept as Solution". I appreciate it.