Webinar - allow participants to unmute themselves by default?

[tylerkurth]

Good morning, 

Is there a way or option to, by default, allow participants in a webinar the ability to unmute themselves? I have done some digging, and I believe I found a way to enable it per meeting, but we would prefer it to be a default "going forward" option that anybody in a webinar can unmute themselves to speak. 

Thanks, 

Tyler Kurth 

[Ray_Harwood · Accepted solution]

Hey, @tylerkurth.

When you say "Participants", do you mean attendees (in the audience) or Panelists ("on stage")?  There is no way to enable Attendees to unmute themselves, except for individually by a Host or Co-Host from the Participant's window.

For Panelists: As of Zoom Windows version 5.17.1, the Participants More/ellipsis menu looks like this:

There is the menu option labelled "Allow Participants to Unmute Themselves" (which only pertains to Panelists, not Attendees).  Mine defaults to Enabled, but I haven't found where you can change that default setting, if yours defaults to Disabled.

[tylerswire]

Just done with a webinar with over 120 participants. Myself & two other panelists. Though I own the webinar, one of the other panelists joined before I did so had the host role. I attempted the method you suggested to allow all attendees to unmute but that did not work. Does it require me to reclaim host role in order for that to function?

[tylerkurth]

Het Ray, 

Thanks for the reply. I figured that was the case seeing as I couldn't find the options either. Thanks! 

Thanks, 

Tyler Kurth