Allow hosts to "raise hand" of a participant

[EFCSJ]

Just as Zoom has added a feature to allow hosts to unmute participants, we need the ability to toggle "raise hand" for participants. While Zoom will already allow a host to "lower" a participant's hand, it will not allow a host to "raise" a participants hand.

Many participants simply do not know how to use the "raise hand" option in the UI. Unfortunately, the location of the "raise hand" option also varies on different devices, so it is hard to give a quick instruction. Zoom has clearly been struggling with this and recently moved "raise hand" into the reactions to help resolve the situation, but this seems to have confused some of our participants who will "clap" or "thumbs up" instead of "raise hand." Some participants (we have many over 80 years old!) simply can't be counted on to raise their own hand.

As a consequence, we have to monitor the meeting for people waving their hands in their video feeds. Unfortunately, once we identify someone who has raised their real hand instead of their virtual one, Zoom give us as hosts and co-hosts no way to assist them. We really need to be able to "raise" their virtual hand for them.

I frankly think this is important enough a need that it should just be available by default under the triple-dot menu of each participant. Hosts should always be able to choose "Raise Hand" from this menu for any given participant (just like we can rename them here). But it would be acceptable if less-than-ideal, if Zoom considers this a privacy issue, to make this a feature similar to the "Allow hosts to unmute" option that is opt-in.

Right now we either have to keep paper lists of participants who want to say something or we have to use the rename feature to add something like a "?" to the front of their names to keep track. Both of these are awkward and error prone work-arounds.

Please, Zoom, allow hosts to "raise" the hand of participants who are trying to get our attention, so that everyone can have a fair chance and getting a word in, even if they can't quite figure out the Zoom UI.

[colegs]

@EFCSJ I think you have a compelling use case.  In order to get this in front of the Zoom product team, can you please enter the request here.

[EFCSJ]

Thank you, I’ve just done that.

[AlnKOka]

We have our Co-Hosts "pin" the (physical) raised hand Participants. When it's time, they (CoHost) may unmute with "We have a question from [Name]..." then UnMute (or "Ask to unMute") the Participant. It seems easy enough - paperless, gentle, kind?