Overview
Previously, meeting sessions were only able to reach an audience larger than 500 people if they used live streaming. However, live streaming doesn’t allow viewers to easily interact with the meeting's active participants.
As of October 15, 2024, a new feature called Very Large Meetings was introduced in Beta. It allowed meetings to go beyond 500 participants, where moderators are able to easily change their status from a viewer to an active participant at any time.
On December 15, 2025, the Very Large Meetings feature entered General Availability.
Applies To
- 8x8 Work
- 8x8 Meet
FAQ
What are the new features?
This new update introduces "Large Meetings".
What are Large Meetings?
“Large Meetings” are meetings designed for bigger audiences with a focus on one or a few speakers. They are ideal for presentations, webinars, or events where audience members primarily watch and listen, rather than actively participate. This format helps maintain structure and clarity when addressing many participants. Note that, despite the name, there is no minimum requirement for the number of participants.
Meeting Configuration and Capacity:
- Designating a Large Meeting: Any scheduled calendar meeting can be configured as a "Large Meeting" by selecting the "Meeting Settings" link within the calendar event.
- Standard Meeting Limit: Meetings not specifically designated as a "Large Meeting" are limited to 500 active participants and will not support viewers.
- Participant Limit: A "Large Meeting" supports up to 10,000 total participants (a combination of active participants and viewers).
Active Participants and Viewers:
- Role Management: The meeting owner can specify a pre-set list of active participants and moderators. Everyone else who joins the meeting will automatically be designated as a viewer.
- Role Switching: Moderators have the ability to change viewers to active participants (up to the 500 active participant limit at any given time) and vice versa.
- Visibility: The display will show the current number of both active participants and viewers in the meeting.
Owner Controls and Advanced Settings:
- The meeting owner has comprehensive control over the meeting, including:
- Access permissions
- Setting up automated recording and transcriptions
- Enabling the "Go live" feature
- These advanced settings can be configured in advance when the meeting is scheduled.
How can viewers be promoted to active participants?
- viewers need to raise their hand if they want to be promoted to an active participant, to actively participate in a meeting.
- A notification will be shown to the meeting moderators that a viewer has requested to be promoted to an active participant.
- A meeting moderator can accept or reject the viewer’s request to be promoted to an active participant.
What functionality is available for viewers?
Viewers will be able to access the following features:
- Meeting chat
- Meeting Polls (only participate, not create)
- Raise your hand
- Toggle tile view
- More actions (only Audio and Profile settings)
- Leave the meeting
Viewers will be unable to access these features as they are only available for active users:
- Speak in the meeting
- Show their camera
- Meeting breakout rooms
- Post-meeting details (meeting resources such as participants list, recording file, meeting transcript, meeting summary & action items)
Don’t start the meeting without me
The "Don't start the meeting without me" option, found in 8x8 Work's Meeting Settings, enables users to set a requirement that they must be present before any other participants can join their meetings. In the context of a large meeting, that option won’t be taken into consideration. In other words, if a user with that option enabled configures a meeting to be a “Large Meeting”, the newly configured “Large Meeting” would not respect the “Don’t start the meeting without me” property but would rather respect the list of active participants configured in the Meetings Settings.
Meeting Lobby
Lobby does not work during a “Large Meeting”. There’s no way to configure a lobby for a meeting of type “Large Meeting”. The “Go Live” feature and moderation controls are taking care of controlling access to those types of meetings.