Increasing Capacity on the Fly

[SLE]

If i add a large meeting while a meeting is in session will the capacity for that meeting increase?

I'm not sure if my meeting will actually go over 100 until it has started. If I add-on large meeting while in session will the capacity increase?

[Ray_Harwood · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the Zoom Community, @SLE.

I was once attending a Webinar 500 session where the hosts were attempting to start a LiveStream when the meeting hit capacity... and they had issues getting the Livestream started. All of a sudden, the attendee count started going over 500 (to around 800).

Based on that experience, my theory is that you can upgrade your account's capacity while a session is in progress and it will be effective immediately.

I'd also like to know definitively if this is true, or if there might have been some sort of dark magic required to make that happen. I've reached out to the Zoom Community Champions (internally) to see if we can find the real answer.  Stay tuned!

Update:

One of my friendly Zoom Employee Champions @Bort sent me this note:

The last time I had looked into this (a few years ago), the answer was yes, it can be done on the fly, but the change is not guaranteed to take effect immediately. It can take up to ~10 minutes for that change to sync across all the different backend systems and grant the increased capacity, especially if they are purchasing and assigning that license on the fly (Billing system > user system > meeting/webinar system). Since that delay varies, it is still recommended to assign licenses BEFORE the start to ensure they are immediately in effect. I suspect that is still the case, but it’s very difficult to test those situations requiring 100s of people all at the same time.

So the bottom line is... don't wait until the 100th person comes in to get started on the Large Meeting upgrade.  If this is a one-time situation, be sure to indicate you only want 1 month of Large Meetings enabled:

I don't recommend getting the Annual license, since it doesn't save you any money over the Monthly Recurring option (you'd get a pro-rated amount charged now, through the date of your next annual account renewal; then on that date, you'd get the full annual charge for another year), and isn't cancelable after renewal with refund -- you can only stop future renewals.

See these Zoom Support articles for additional information:

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362823-Enabling-the-Large-Meeting-add-on 

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/15900137753613 (best practices in large meetings)

[Ray_Harwood · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the Zoom Community, @SLE.

I was once attending a Webinar 500 session where the hosts were attempting to start a LiveStream when the meeting hit capacity... and they had issues getting the Livestream started. All of a sudden, the attendee count started going over 500 (to around 800).

Based on that experience, my theory is that you can upgrade your account's capacity while a session is in progress and it will be effective immediately.

I'd also like to know definitively if this is true, or if there might have been some sort of dark magic required to make that happen. I've reached out to the Zoom Community Champions (internally) to see if we can find the real answer.  Stay tuned!

Update:

One of my friendly Zoom Employee Champions @Bort sent me this note:

The last time I had looked into this (a few years ago), the answer was yes, it can be done on the fly, but the change is not guaranteed to take effect immediately. It can take up to ~10 minutes for that change to sync across all the different backend systems and grant the increased capacity, especially if they are purchasing and assigning that license on the fly (Billing system > user system > meeting/webinar system). Since that delay varies, it is still recommended to assign licenses BEFORE the start to ensure they are immediately in effect. I suspect that is still the case, but it’s very difficult to test those situations requiring 100s of people all at the same time.

So the bottom line is... don't wait until the 100th person comes in to get started on the Large Meeting upgrade.  If this is a one-time situation, be sure to indicate you only want 1 month of Large Meetings enabled:

I don't recommend getting the Annual license, since it doesn't save you any money over the Monthly Recurring option (you'd get a pro-rated amount charged now, through the date of your next annual account renewal; then on that date, you'd get the full annual charge for another year), and isn't cancelable after renewal with refund -- you can only stop future renewals.

See these Zoom Support articles for additional information:

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362823-Enabling-the-Large-Meeting-add-on 

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/15900137753613 (best practices in large meetings)

[SLE · Accepted solution]

Thank you for such a detailed answer.

I got a response from Zoom and they said that you need to end the meeting and then restart it for the capacity to take effect.