Changing hosts with a Pro license

Question

Garden Club has a Pro license.  Linda is the host.  Linda has a funeral to attend and cannot host/start the meeting.  Jill, the president, wants to host the meeting.  She tried and her meeting ended after 40 minutes.  The error message said she needed a Zoom Pro license.  Our organization has one.  Is there a way to temporarily change hosts?

Ray_Harwood · Answer

Welcome to the Zoom Community, @Jill4gardenclub.

There is a way to accomplish this. The owner of the meeting is still technically "in charge" of the meeting... you can't change the host of the meeting in your situation. What you can do is allow someone else to claim the host role once they're in the meeting with something called the Host Key.

Here's how it works. First, the meeting must be set up with Waiting Room disabled, and with Join Before Host enabled. I recommend setting the Join Before Host time limit to 15 minutes; never set it for Anytime.

Note: Since Waiting Room has to be disabled, if you did not create a Passcode for the meeting, you'll have to add one. Be sure to give out the new Join link or provide the Passcode to all who will be attending.

Now the meeting owner needs to look at their Profile page on the Zoom Web Portal (https://zoom.us/profile)

See the Host Key which is represented with a bunch of asterisks for security purposes. Click the little eyelash symbol, and your Host Key will be visible. (Note: You can change the Host Key by clicking the Edit link at the far right.)

The meeting owner gives this to a trusted person who will be attending the meeting. Since the Waiting Room is disabled and the Join Before Host is enabled, anyone can join the meeting during the time allowed. The person with the Host Key brings up the Panelist window, which now has a "Claim Host" button. Click the Claim Host button, type in the Host Key and click Okay -- now that person is the meeting Host, and has all of the privileges that a Host would normally have -- including re-enabling the Waiting Room, if that's what you normally do.

The process might sound complicated at first, but once you've gone through it once, you'll find it's pretty easy.

Here's a few Zoom Support articles that might be helpful:

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/202828525-Allow-participants-to-join-before-host

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/205172555-Using-your-host-key