Waiting Rooms

Overview

The Waiting Room is a virtual space in Zoom where participants are essentially on hold. Each participant is placed in their own private space. They cannot interact with each other through Zoom. However, the meeting Host and Co-hosts can send them messages and they can reply.

Hosts and Co-hosts have several options for using the Waiting Room:

  • The Waiting Room feature can be enabled before the meeting during the scheduling process. For more information, see the page on Scheduling a Meeting.
  • Host and Co-hosts can enable/disable the Waiting Room during a meeting.
  • Hosts and Co-hosts can place individual participants in the Waiting Room, whether or not the Waiting Room feature has been enabled for the entire meeting.

When participants are in the Waiting Room, a notification will appear in the Host’s and Co-host’s Participant Panel. The Host and Co-hosts can then admit the participant or deny their request to join. Participants can be admitted individually or all at once.

Options for personalizing your Waiting Room, including who can bypass it, are available in your Zoom settings.

Enabling/Disabling the Waiting Room During Meetings

During a meeting, hosts and co-hosts can turn the waiting room feature on and off in two ways.

Option 1 – From the Host Tools

Click on the Host tools button in the bottom toolbar and toggle the Enable waiting room setting on/off as needed.

Option to enable waiting room

Sending an Individual Participant to the Waiting Room

At any point during a meeting, Hosts and Co-hosts can move participants to the Waiting Room. The Waiting Room feature does NOT need to be on for the entire meeting to do this. Go to the Participant Panel, click the options button next to someone’s name, and select Put in waiting room.

Putting an attendee in the waiting room

Managing the Waiting Room

When participants are in the Waiting Room, Hosts and Co-hosts can admit or remove them on an individual basis. Alternatively, they can admit everyone at once by clicking Admit all.

Admitting participants from Waiting Room

Hosts and Co-hosts can also send messages to individual participants in the Waiting Room and participants can also reply to these messages.

Sending message to Waiting Room

 

These settings will only apply to meetings that you schedule.

  1. Log in to tufts.zoom.us with your Tufts username (e.g. jjumbo01) and password.
  2. Click your profile icon in the top right corner and select My account.
  3. In the lefthand menu, select Settings > Meeting.
  4. Find the waiting room settings and adjust as needed.
    • ​​​​​​​Enable waiting room – Turning on the toggle switch will enable the waiting room by default for all of your meetings. When this toggle is off, you can still turn on the waiting room for individual meetings.
    • Edit Options – Determine who goes into your Waiting Room, the order that Waiting Room participants are listed in, and what happens to meeting participants if the Host/Co-hosts accidentally drop from the meeting. You can also enable two-way messaging between Hosts/Co-hosts and Waiting Room participants.
    • Customize Waiting Room – Manage the appearance of your waiting roomWaiting room settings