Participants raising their hands and unable to unmute during a webinar

[LindaF1]

Three participants at a webinar raised their hands to speak: All three followed the same exact instructions to unmute. Only one was able to unmute and speak, the other two were not able to, although they kept on pressing the unmute option that kept on popping up. They are not new to Zoom; they have participated in the past and know how to unmute in order to speak. Could this be this the host's admin mistake?

[Ray_Harwood · Accepted solution]

Hi, @LindaF1.

I've done a lot of Webinars.  The process of permitting attendees to speak is straightforward and always works when strictly followed, but often people accidentally hit the Raise Hand button, change their mind before being called on, or don't have a microphone plugged in and tested once they're permitted to speak.

It's impossible to determine "who messed up" after the fact.  People say "I clicked the button", but it's not always clear (to them or to the host) which button was clicked, and whether it might have actually disappeared moments before.

I'm always ready to advise attendees who don't immediately respond to the Allow to Speak action that "we'd love to hear from you, sorry you couldn't speak, but feel free to enter your comments in the Chat window).  I recommend not spending a lot of time trying to troubleshoot one person's inability to speak, especially when Chat or Q&A are also an option.

[Ray_Harwood · Accepted solution]

Hi, @LindaF1.

I've done a lot of Webinars.  The process of permitting attendees to speak is straightforward and always works when strictly followed, but often people accidentally hit the Raise Hand button, change their mind before being called on, or don't have a microphone plugged in and tested once they're permitted to speak.

It's impossible to determine "who messed up" after the fact.  People say "I clicked the button", but it's not always clear (to them or to the host) which button was clicked, and whether it might have actually disappeared moments before.

I'm always ready to advise attendees who don't immediately respond to the Allow to Speak action that "we'd love to hear from you, sorry you couldn't speak, but feel free to enter your comments in the Chat window).  I recommend not spending a lot of time trying to troubleshoot one person's inability to speak, especially when Chat or Q&A are also an option.

[LindaFM]

Dear @Ray_Harwood,

Thank you for your very prompt reply. I appreciate you taking the time to response and share your expertise and experience. For some reason I could not login back as LindaF1, so I am LindaFM today -- go figure. Re: this meeting, I was not the host; I was one of the participants and I happened to be with the only one that was able to speak. I understand that attendees may make mistakes, but the other two attendees who wanted to participate were not unmuted when it was their turn to speak. Though they were in separate locations, both emailed me their self-recorded phone videos to show me what their actions were and they followed exactly the same steps I did: they raised their hand and they clicked the «unmute» box when called up; however, the once they clicked the unmute box it would disappear before immediately appearing again. They did the same action about five or six times each, separately and at different moments during the meeting. Neither was able to speak. If the issue was not from their side, what are the odds that the host admin (who is new) kept on muting them back again? These are attendees who always speak at these meetings, so they are seasoned Zoom users, unlike the new admin who said it may have been a glitch. It was suspiciously odd that two out of three raised hands were affected by that «glitch.» I just wanted to find out if it is not uncommon to see rookie host/admin mistakes like these, though we know that the majority of the time the mistakes are usually made by the attendees. Thanks for your help and wise words! 😉

[Ray_Harwood · Accepted solution]

Welcome back!  Normally if you log in to your Zoom account first, then come to the Community... you're either logged in immediately OR just need to hit the "log in again" button which checks to see that you were logged in on the Zoom portal.

Anyway... what I do see quite often is that someone clicks their Mute/Unmute button at about the same time that the Host clicks the Unmute button on the Participants panel or the user's video box.  I've done this!!  And then you notice that they're not unmuted, and you realize that maybe you unmuted them at the same time they were unmuting, and one or the other of you re-muted.  So you click again... at the same time they're thinking the same thing!  I've learned to only unmute an attendee once... and if they have simultaneously unmuted (thereby remuting themselves)... then they are most likely to think "Oh, I didn't hit the Unmute button correctly, let me do it again", and then they'll unmuted.  (Don't get into the Groundhog Day scenario of doing it over and over again!) 

I also tend to wait and see if the user will unmute themselves, because many will, and then if I see them talking, I'll be ready to unmute them.  It's a fine line between being too quick and just quick enough!

So it's impossible to tell exactly what happened, but that's a likely scenario which I see even the most seasoned Hosts doing on occasion.  You wait just another couple of seconds, and they're still talking with Mute on, then you reach down and click Unmute just as they discover it for themselves and click it almost immediately.  Sometimes you can't win! That's why in general I'll only click it once.

Hopefully that helps!

[LindaFM]

Dear @Ray_Harwood,

Wow! Thanks for your instant reply. I'm very grateful for your feedback. It helps me a lot.

It makes sense that it that the new admin just was trigger happy and kept on muting the attendees back after they unmuted. Who knows? But this is good information to share with him so that this is not repeated and we do not have unhappy participants claiming that they were being «intentionally muted.»

I'm glad I found this community. Your responses were super-helpful. Keep up the excellent work you're doing for Zoom and for us users.

All the best,

L