Muting all participants except host and cohost

[Phil17]

I recently hosted a meeting which was intended to be only partially interactive — it was largely a lecture by the speaker, so no need for participants to have video or audio. We wanted questions via chat rather than speaking up.

Setting up no video was easy, if I recall correctly, it was an option when I created the meeting.

However, as the meeting was about to start, I realize the mikes of all the participants were on. I started manually turning them off but then realized there was an option to “mute all” which I clicked on. Unfortunately, it was literally correct, and turned off the mike of the host and cohost.

I suppose I can imagine a situation where it would literally make sense to turn off everyone’s mike, but I suggest that the more common scenario is that you want the mikes live for the host and cohost and not for the other participants. May I suggest adding an option in addition to “mute all” which would allow you to “mute all except host and cohost”

This seems so obvious it’s possible there is such an option and I missed it. If that’s the case I would appreciate someone telling me what I should have done instead, but if not, I suggest it would make a good feature.

[Rupert]

Hi @Phil17 

It might be easier to start the meeting with Participants muted, and then not allow Participants to un-mute themselves.

Co/Hosts should be except from this.

You may also want to look at using Webinar instead.

[bquinlan]

I agree, that this should be an option to have that button. I run into that as well. Even if I set the meeting to mute on entry, sometimes when people come in after the meeting has started they are not muted. Then it's whack-a-mole to find and mute them.
Please add a mute all but hosts, co-hosts.