Recommended Settings for Hosting a Large Meeting on Zoom

Before You Begin

Zoom offers two products:

• Zoom Meeting: Used by faculty, staff, and students. It supports up to 300 participants. It is built for collaboration, but you can adjust settings to make it work more like a controlled presentation.
• Zoom Webinar: Better for large public events and audiences of 300 to 10,000 people. Webinars are usually one-way presentations, with limited attendee interaction, and require a separate license at an additional cost.

For more information, see Zoom Webinar Services.

If your event has fewer than 300 people, a regular Zoom Meeting will usually work well if you change a few settings and follow these best practices to reduce disruptions.

Schedule the Meeting

Before you begin, we recommend that you check for Zoom updates. Ask any co-hosts or technical helpers to update Zoom as well. Some recommended features require the latest version.

1. Go to zoom.nd.edu and sign in.

2. In the left navigation, click Meetings.

3. Click Schedule a New Meeting.

4. Enter the Topic for the meeting.

5. Enter the meeting date and time. If needed, select Recurring meeting.

   Set Access and Basic Meeting Options

6. Decide whether to turn on Registration:

   • Turn it on for a public event or virtual conference.
   • Registration helps you estimate attendance and share a registration link instead of the direct Zoom meeting link.
   • For more information, see Zoom’s Registration for Meetings guide.

7. Set Meeting ID to Generate Automatically.

8. If Registration is enabled, a meeting passcode is not needed.

9. In the Video section, set Participant video to Off. This helps reduce distractions in large, presentation-style events.

10. In the Audio section, select Both.

Configure Meeting Options

Use these settings to make the meeting work more like a webinar.

Recommended settings to turn on

• In Meeting Options, set the following:
  1. Turn on Enable join before host.
  2. Turn on Mute participants upon entry.
  3. Turn on Enable waiting room. This lets the host, co-hosts, and technical helpers join early, confirm everything is ready, and then admit attendees. After the meeting starts, a technical helper can admit late arrivals as needed.

Recommended settings to turn off

• In Meeting Options, set the following:
  1. Turn off Only authenticated users can join. For webinar-style or public events, leave this off so guests can attend.
  2. Turn off Breakout Room pre-assign.
  3. Turn off Enable additional data center regions for this meeting, unless you expect attendees joining from China or Hong Kong.

Optional setting

• Choose whether to turn on Record the meeting automatically.
  • Turn it on if you want recording to start when the meeting begins.
  • Leave it off if you prefer to start recording manually later.
  • The host can start recording manually at any time during the meeting.

Alternative Hosts and Co-Hosts

• Add alternative hosts if needed.

Use these roles correctly:

• • Alternative host: Assign this when you are scheduling the meeting for someone else or need another person to be able to start the meeting.
  • Co-host: Assign this after the meeting starts. Co-hosts help manage the live session but cannot be set in advance during scheduling.

Save the Meeting

• Click Save.