Web Conferencing

The Meeting and Webinar platforms offer similar features and functionality but have some key differences.

Meetings are designed to be a collaborative event with all participants being able to screen share, turn on their video and audio, and see who else is in attendance.

Webinars are designed so that the host and any designated panelists can share their video, audio and screen, while participants cannot. However, participants can still interact via Chat and Q&A. 

Visit Zoom Support for more information on feature and control differences between meetings and webinars.

There are multiple roles available for a webinar: host, co-host, panelist, and attendees. The role that you have in the webinar will be designated by the host.

HOST AND CO-HOSTS

The host of the webinar is the user who the webinar is scheduled under. They have full permissions to manage the webinar, panelists, and attendees. There can only be one host of a webinar. The host can do things like stop and start the webinar, mute panelists, stop panelists' video, remove attendees from the webinar, and more.

Co-hosts share many of the controls that hosts have, allowing the co-host to manage the administrative side of the webinar, such as managing attendees or starting/stopping the recording.

The host must assign a co-host. Co-hosts cannot start a webinar. If a host needs someone else to be able to start the webinar, they can assign an alternative host.

Visit Zoom Support for more information on webinar roles or assigning co-hosts.

PANELISTS

Panelists are full participants in the meeting. They have access to most host controls including sharing video and viewing the attendee list. You must be assigned panelist permissions by the webinar host. You can also promote an attendee to a panelist during a webinar.

Visit Zoom Support for more information on panelists.

ATTENDEES

If you are registering for or joining a webinar and haven’t received an email confirmation that’s for a panelist or alternative host, you are an attendee in the webinar. As an attendee, you can virtually raise your hand, submit questions in Q&A, and send messages to others.

Note: Some attendee controls won’t be available if disabled by the host.

Visit Zoom Support for more information on joining a webinar as an attendee.

Webinars can require preregistration before the event. The host can either automatically approve all registrants or manually approve. The host can add custom registration questions and pull reports on the registration.

Alternatively, the host can turn off registration for the webinar. The attendees will still be required to enter their name and email address upon joining and the reports will be limited to this information.

Visit Zoom Support for more information on requiring registration, registration customization, or for creating webinars that do not require registration.

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, or panelist.

To enter the practice session, the host, alternative host, or panelist needs to join the webinar before the actual start time. The host can start broadcasting when everyone is ready.

Note: You can have a full practice session days before the actual webinar. You can start the practice session, broadcast, and end the event without impacting your ability to start the webinar at the actual start date/time.

Visit Zoom Support for more information on webinar practice sessions.

You can have both panelists and attendees in your webinar and manage them as the host. By clicking Participants in your host controls, you can manage the panelists and attendees in your webinar. This includes promoting to co-host or panelist, demoting panelists to attendee, unmuting, stopping video, and more.

You can also view reporting on your webinar to see registration, attendee, polling, and other details. 

Visit Zoom Support for more information on managing attendees.

CHAT

The chat feature allows webinar attendees, the host, co-hosts and panelists to communicate for the duration of the webinar. Whether attendees can chat with everyone or only the host will depend on the settings that the host has selected.

Visit Zoom Support for more on using chat in a webinar.

Q&A

The question and 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. Again, these options will depend on the settings that the host has selected.

Visit Zoom Support for more information on webinar Q&A.

The polling feature for Zoom webinars allows you to create single-choice or multiple-choice polling questions for your webinars. You will be able to launch the poll during your webinar and gather the responses from your attendees. You also have the ability to download a report of polling after the webinar. Polls can also be conducted anonymously, if you do not wish to collect attendee information with the poll results.

Hosts and co-hosts can launch polls, but only the host is able to create new polls. Hosts and co-hosts are also not able to vote in polls themselves. When launching the poll, they can choose whether or not panelists are able to participate.

You can have 25 polls added per scheduled webinar.

Visit Zoom Support for more information on polling in a webinar.

As the host of a webinar, you can schedule a survey to be sent to attendees when the Zoom webinar ends; the survey's responses can be downloaded as a report to simplify feedback collection. You can take a poll during a webinar if you want to collect feedback in real-time.

In addition to Zoom webinar's survey feature, you can redirect attendees to a third-party survey service (for example Google Forms or Survey Monkey).

Visit Zoom Support for more information on post-webinar feedback or webinar reporting.