Waiting room list order

[furuta]

We are using Zoom meetings for virtual drop in advising.  These have the waiting room enabled so that we can talk to students individually.  In some of our meetings, the waiting room participant list is ordered by order of arrival.  In others it is ordered alphabetically.  We cannot figure out why this would differ between rooms.  Our preferred order would be for all waiting rooms to be in order of arrival.  How could we achieve this?

In Google searches, I see that some institutions indicate that waiting rooms are listed in order of arrival and others indicate that they are alphabetical.  I don't find any information about what determines this or how to change it.

[ayres-uiw]

Hi, we're having this same issue at my institution. Wondering if users who still have participants arranged in order of arrival are simply running an older version of Zoom. Did you find a solution?

[furuta]

Our IT helpdesk contacted Zoom and was told that it was a feature of the newer versions and that there wasn't a way to change it back.  They also said "The ability to change it has been requested but will not happen in the forseeable future. At this time you will only be able to view the waiting room alphabetically."  I asked if possible if they could relay back to Zoom the message that the alphabetical listing was problematic for advising offices and office hours where order of arrival is important.  I don't know if they did, but you might have your organization tell Zoom too.  More voices can't hurt.

It does appear that older Zoom versions still see the list in arrival order, so I think that means that I will not be upgrading anytime soon.  My Zoom version is (Mac) 5.9.1 and shows the waiting room in arrival order.  I see waiting-room-related changes in the release notes for 5.9.3 and 5.10.0.

[Bort]

Great news @furuta & @ayres-uiw!
This weekend's release will provide the ability to switch between alphabetical and chronological sorting for waiting room participants. 
You can read more about the release here: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/5404009575949-Release-notes-for-April-18-2022