Managing Participants During a Zoom Meeting

Here is a great tutorial from Zoom on the many ways a Host can manage participants during a Zoom meeting:

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115005759423-Managing-participants-in-a-meeting

In this tutorial, scroll to the bottom and click on the environment in which you use Zoom (e.g. Windows, iPad, web browser, etc.) to see details on how to enact all of the features possible to manage participants during a meeting. It is a good idea to test some of these features out on a call with some friends or co-workers so you know how to use them before you need them in meeting. 

Here are some key features to pay attention to (see the link above for details on HOW to do each of these things):

Enable Screen Share for Participants

Due to some abuse of the screen sharing feature, Zoom has recently changed the default setting for who can share screen in a meeting. By default now, only the host can share screen. See Zoom's announcement about this change. During a meeting, you can enable other participants to share screen by clicking the arrow next to the Share Screen icon and choosing advanced sharing options and changing the "Who Can Share" option.

If you would rather change your own Zoom account default to allow all participants to share screen, you can adjust your meeting settings to allow all participants to share. You can always disable sharing for participants within a meeting using the same procedure described above.   

Lock Meeting 

Once all of your participants have joined your meeting, you can use the Lock Meeting feature to prevent any additional participants from joining the meeting. This can be particularly useful if you have shared a meeting link in a public place. 

The Lock Meeting option is usually found in the More options settings at the bottom of the participant list for a meeting.

Mute Participant Audio or Video

If a user is being disruptive through audio or video, you can mute the participant's audio or video from the participant list in a meeting. Just click on the participant in the list and choose the mute or stop video option or both. Keep in mind, this is only a temporary fix because participants can unmute themselves and restart their own video. So, this is a great tool for managing background noise from a participant or hiding someone's video if they are moving around a lot or doing other things during the meeting. 

Remove a Participant

If a user is misbehaving in a meeting or being disruptive in such a way that you want them to leave the meeting, you can click on the participant in the participant list and choose Remove. If you do remove a user, it is good practice also to use the Lock Meeting function (see above) so that the same user can't rejoin under a different account or from a different device. 

If a participant is misusing the virtual background feature and displaying images that are disruptive or insensitive, use this Remove and Lock Meeting combination to remove the participant from the meeting. 

Disable Chat

If you have participants abusing the chat feature in a Zoom meeting, you can disable participant ability to chat by opening the chat window and changing the setting "Allow attendees to chat with:" to No one. For more details see Zoom's documentation on controlling chat in a meeting.