Meeting Room

[Roscommon]

Is there a way to mass put attendees back into the waiting room during a meeting.  I run meetings for a municipality where the meetings are open to the public, but from time to time they need to enter into closed session.  This requires me to one at a time send attendees to the waiting room, which can be very time consuming when you have 50 -100 attendees.  Normally only one or two attendees stay on the entire time.

[storyhub]

New in version 5.17.10

Auto-move to/from Waiting Room 
Admins have additional Waiting Room customization options, allowing them to automatically move participants to the Waiting Room if the host or alternative host leaves, as well as automatically admit those participants back into the meeting when the host or alternative host returns. Upon leaving the meeting, the host will be notified that the participants have been moved, and the participants will remain in the Waiting Room to wait for a host to return. This feature supports up to 50 participants in the Waiting Room.

There is another possible option. That is to place everyone into a break out room that does not allow them to return to the main room until the host ends the breakout room. When doing this you can do an automatic multiple selection of everyone in the main room when you create just 1 room. Select options before opening the room and uncheck

 Allow participants to return to the main session at any time: If this option is checked, the participants can move back to the main session from their meeting controls. If this is disabled, they need to wait for the host or co-host to end the breakout rooms.

see https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0062540

Anyone that refuses to join can be forced into the waiting room. Provide something in the waiting room as an enticement to join. Maybe even provide a presentation (using another computer) that is educational or entertaining to offset boredom and retain an audience. You can even broadcast to the group and/or set a timer to automatically return everyone after a specific time.