Allowing Multiple Hosts

[teamsheltie]

We are a 7-night-a-week 12-step meeting. Now that we are public, we are having issues with "bombing." Because we have a different leader every night and the person with the account (me) isn't always at the meeting, how do we allow multiple hosts to manage participants, etc.?

[Ray_Harwood]

Welcome to the Zoom Community, @teamsheltie.

This is a difficult situation: How to control access to a meeting but let a different person control the meeting every night.  I’m going to ramble through a few things to explain why, before suggesting a few possible solutions. 

In your case, as with many others like this, the following circumstances work against you:

• The potential meeting hosts are generally not licensed Zoom users on the same organizational account.
• The pool of potential hosts is potentially large, possibly with frequent turnover.
• There isn’t one person available to start (nearly) every meeting, but who ultimately hands it over to someone else.
• There’s a need to make the Join link relatively available to potential attendees, but there is a high potential for “bad actions” from people who seek “open access” meetings such as these to misbehave in.
• Requiring registration for these meetings is not recommended due to a variety of reasons, such as a need for anonymity.

There are two approaches that work only for Licensed users on one organizational account: Scheduling Privilege and Alt Host. For any situation where the majority of potential hosts are on the same account, these are well advised. 

For your situation, however, only the Host Key approach is helpful. Here are the steps for using Host Key:

1. The meeting must be set up with a Passcode. Normally the Join link includes the Passcode embedded in the URL, so that attendees need not manually enter it when joining.
2. Waiting Room must be disabled in the meeting setup.  It can (and should, in this case) be enabled once a Host is established in the meeting.
3. Join Before Host must be enabled, and I recommend setting a time of 15 minutes early.  I do not recommend setting the Join Before Host limitation to “any time”, as this allows people to enter the room literally any time, any day.
4. The meeting owner must obtain their Host Key from their account profile web page.
5. The meeting owner must provide the Host Key to potential hosts. I recommend that hosts be trusted and experienced in managing meetings, including the setting of security measures like enabling Waiting Room.
6. Potential hosts should arrive in the meeting as soon as possible before the scheduled meeting starts. Other attendees might join early as well. The potential host opens the Participant window and clicks the Claim Host button, enters the Host Key, and clicks Claim Host.
7. The potential Host is now the actual Host of the meeting. I recommend in this case that the Host immediately enable the Waiting Room, or at least be prepared to take appropriate measures in case of any attendee misconduct. 
8. With recurring meetings, a consequence of these requirements is that all occurrences of meetings should be set up with the correct start date and time.  Since scheduled recurrences are limited to 60, this would occasionally require establishing new meetings or set the meeting as No Fixed Time and accept that anyone can start the meeting any time and – with the Host Key – can Claim Host and capture the meeting. 
9. Note: If nobody claims the Host role, the meeting room will remain open for anyone (with the Meeting ID and Passcode or the full Join URL) to join.
10. I do recommend changing the Host Key “regularly”, perhaps monthly for these daily meetings (re-communicating the new Host Key to trusted potential Hosts) or at least quarterly. If someone with the Host Key “goes rogue” and locks the room, refusing to let anyone in, the only recourse is for the Meeting Owner to join the meeting and claim Host when prompted. At this point, the Host Key should be immediately changed and communicated to the trusted potential Hosts. 

This probably looks long and complicated, but the steps are short and simple. 

See this Zoom Support article for details on the Host Key:

https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0067063 

[teamsheltie]

Thanks for this, Ray. We have implemented the 15-minute window, and if the group agrees, we'll do the waiting room. We have also looked at the host key option, and I think it's definitely the way to go. I really appreciate your thorough response!