Off-Camera Support Panelists

[FleetioCEd]

Hey All!

I am looking for some ideas on how I can best arrange my webinar to support panelists who will be on and off camera. I currently have webinar access for up to 500 attendees. In our webinars we have 1-2 additional guest speakers with the host who are on camera for the whole webinar. We also have 2 team members whoa ct as support staff and need to have the panelist access to see and answer the Q&A as it comes in but these support members do not need to be on camera or have their name/photo showing while off camera. 

Iv'e explored this topic on the community and it seems that most suggestions state that panelists off camera will not show for attendees but this was not the case for us. In our most recent live webinar, we had 2 speakers and 2 off-camera support team members that had a generic company logo as their photo. These two support team members icons showed during the entire webinar and appeared on the recording which was distracting for attendees. 

Is there a way to have off-camera support panelists not show on the webinar or recording? What settings are needed for this to occur? 

[Ray_Harwood]

Welcome to the Zoom Community, @FleetioCEd.  Sorry for the delay in answering... it's been a week of busy events for me!

Well, it's not particularly obvious, but there are definitely rules I follow that work consistently.  Read this and do some practice sessions, and you'll do fine.

The real trick is for the Host (or any Co-Host) to manually set the Attendees View to Speaker (or if there is screen sharing in process, set to Side-By-Side Speaker).  This is done from the Panelists window from the ... menu in the lower right (which does not show when viewing the Attendee tab, oddly enough):

When Speaker (or Side-By-Side Speaker) is selected, the camera(s) being shown to the Attendees depends on whether or not you have any Panelists (or Hosts/Co-Hosts) Spotlighted.

With no panelists spotlighted, the "active speaker" will be shown to the Attendees, and this will be switched by Zoom depending on who Zoom interprets is the main speaker at any time.

With one or more panelists spotlighted, all spotlit videos (up to nine total) will be visible to the Attendees.  In your case, just do not spotlight the people you don't want visible.  Their cameras can remain on or off... doesn't matter for the Attendees - they won't see them.

Important Notes:

1. You should explain to all of your panelists that they will continue to see whichever View Mode is selected on their own devices -- and you should be very aware of this as well!  I generally have a second PC logged into an account registered as an attendee to verify the view the attendees see.  After doing this for 3 years... I still don't trust myself to always have everything enabled correctly.  But at least once I see something isn't to my liking, I know how to fix it.
2. I highly recommend practicing in a "test" webinar a few times.  It's also important to practice Spotlighting.  Know the difference between Add to Spotlight (someone is already spotlit and you want this person also spotlit) and Replace Spotlight (everyone currently spotlit are removed and the video of the person you are acting on will become the only spotlight active).
3. A consequence of setting Attendee View as Speaker is that setting Attendee View as Gallery (or Side-By-Side Gallery when screen sharing) shows ALL panelists and hosts/co-hosts who have video active.
4. Once you as the Host has set Attendee View to Speaker, that setting will remain (as long as nobody -- you or any other co-hosts -- change it).  The first time screen sharing is up, check the setting again!  Screen sharing in progress changes to the "Standard" or "Side-by-Side" modes; once you set Side-By-Side Speaker, it will remain that way (unless someone changes it).  For this reason, I like to immediately toss up a Screen Share when I open a webinar just to set that, and it will stay that way unless a Co-Host tinkers with it.  Panelists can't change it.
5. Finally, note that this setting only affect Attendee views.  If you are Live-Streaming or Recording, there are different "rendering engines" making the video, and unfortunately you have very little control over them.

I hope that was helpful!