While scheduling a webinar in Zoom, Zoom does not require to secure the webinar. However, it is always recommended to secure the webinar in one or both of the following ways.
- Passcode: Webinar passcodes protect your meetings by the passcodes which you can set manually (or zoom provides by default). This allows the people who have the passcodes to the meeting to join the webinars.
- Require authentication to join: Zoom provides Authentication Profiles for meetings and webinars features that allow only authenticated (people from the same organization) profiles to be in the webinar.
Enable Q and A: The question & answer (Q&A) feature for webinars allows attendees to ask questions during the webinar, and for the panelists, co-hosts, and host to answer their questions. Optionally, attendees can answer and upvote each other's questions.
After the webinar has ended, you can generate a Q&A report for further analysis.
Q&A is also available for use in Meetings.
Enable Practice Session: A webinar practice session allows you to set up and get acquainted with webinar controls before starting your webinar. The practice session is accessible by the host, alternative host, and any panelist.
To enter the practice session, the host, alternative host, and panelist need to simply join the webinar before the host begins broadcasting the webinar live to attendees, as the webinar will begin in the practice session when started. The host or co-host can start broadcasting when everyone is ready.
Notes:
- You can use the practice session days before the actual webinar. You can start the practice session, broadcast, and end the event hours or days ahead of the scheduled date, without impacting your ability to start the webinar at the actual start date/time.
- Panelists joining the webinar practice session must use the unique panelists join link sent to them by the host, or be signed-in to their Zoom account on the desktop or mobile app with the email matching the panelist assignment. If not signed-in or signed-in with a different Zoom account, they will be directed to join as an attendee and will not be able to join the practice session.
- Cloud recording will start when practice session is exited.
- If you have automatic computer recording enabled, it will start for a webinar practice session.
Enable Who Attendees Can Chat with: The chat feature lets webinar attendees, the host, co-hosts, and panelists communicate throughout the webinar. As the host, you can control who panelists and attendees can chat with. Account owners and admins can disable chat entirely.
Note: If you’re prompted that your message triggered a Chat Etiquette policy, you may be warned or blocked depending on your administrator’s settings. The Chat Etiquette Tool does not send additional message details, such as data or metadata, to the account admin, Zoom, or any third-party services.
Live-Webinar Security
- While you are hosting a webinar, it is possible that for multiple reasons you may need to remove some participants from your webinar. To do that simply go to the tool bar of your webinar on the screen. Click Participants > Hover the mouse over the participant you want to remove> Click More> Remove. You will be displayed a box asking to confirm. Click OK, if it is the participant you want to remove.
NOTE: Once you remove the participant from a webinar, the participant won’t be able to join the webinar again.
Making Participant Panelist or Host:
To make participant a host, you need to first promote them to panelist. To do that click on participants on webinar tool bar > go to Attendees tab > hover your mouse over the participant you want to promote > Click on More > Promote to Panelist. Now you will see them in the panelist tab and click on more and you can make them host or co-host.
Chat Function within the Webinar:
You can disable chat function totally or restrict it to panelist and host only. To do that, Click on Chat in the tool bar of webinar. Click on the three-horizontal dots as shown below and select the desired option.
Allowing Participant to talk:
By default, webinar restricts participants from turning on their audio (restricting participants to talk). But you can allow specific participants to talk. To do so, go to participant list > hover mouse over the attendees you want to grant permission > Click on Allow to Talk.
Additional Security Features:
While in the Webinar, in the zoom toolbar click on participants > Panelists > Below on the right corner, Click on the three horizontal dots (more).
You can activate/enable these features by checking them or simply clicking on them. To deactivate or disable these features uncheck or click on them once again.
Note: “Ask All to Unmute/mute” is for both Panelists and attendees.