Overview
Previously, meeting sessions were only able to reach an audience bigger than 500 people if they used live streaming. However live streaming doesn’t allow visitors to easily interact with the meeting active participants.
As of October 15, 2024, a new feature called Very Large Meetings allows meetings to go beyond 500 participants, where moderators are able to easily change their status from a visitor to an active participant at any time.
Applies To
- 8x8 Work
- 8x8 Meet
FAQ
What are the new features?
This new update will add the ability to:
- Support for 10,000 participants in a meeting (active participants and visitors).
- The number of active participants can be adjusted. The first 250 participants will join as active participants, the others will join as visitors.
- Allow moderators to change visitors to active participants, in the limit of 500 active participants in a meeting at any given moment, and back to visitors.
- Display the number of active participants and visitors in a meeting.
How can visitors be promoted to active participants?
- Visitors 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 visitor requested to be promoted to an active participant.
- A meeting moderator can accept or reject the visitor’s request to be promoted to an active participant.
What functionality is available for visitors?
Visitors will be able to access the following features:
- Meeting chat
- Raise your hand
- Toggle tile view
- More actions (only Audio and Profile settings)
- Leave the meeting
Visitors 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
- Meeting polls
- Post-meeting details (meeting resources such as participants list, recording file, meeting transcript, meeting summary & action items)
Meeting Lobby
The Meeting Lobby can be turned on by default by enabling the Don’t start the meeting without me option in your Work app Meetings settings. You can also enable and disable the lobby during a meeting by going to More Actions and then Security Options.
- If the meeting lobby setting is on, then it will be possible for 500 participants to join the meeting as active participants. No visitors will be allowed in these meetings.
- If the meeting lobby setting is off, then you will be in a very large meeting by default. Any participants joining after the meeting reaches 250 participants will be set as a visitor. Moderators can change participant status between active participant and visitor, up to 500 active participants.
- If the meeting lobby setting is off, and there is at least 1 visitor or 501 participants in the meeting, then the meeting lobby cannot be turned on, and you are locked to a very large meeting (up to 10,000).
Note: If a meeting has visitors, then Lobby can’t be turned on unless all visitors are changed to active participants (maximum 500).Example 1 - A meeting has 260 participants with Lobby turned off. The last 10 of those 250 participants would automatically join as visitors. A moderator can change those visitors into active participants and at which point, Lobby can be turned on.
Example 2 - A meeting has 30 participants with Lobby turned off. A moderator changed 1 of those active participants into a visitor. Lobby can no longer be turned on until all visitors are changed back to active participants.