Zoom Host Instructions

How to Claim Host of Your Meeting

The host of a virtual meeting is somewhat like a moderator. As with in person meetings, most meetings moderate themselves and typically you won’t need to take any actions during the meeting. That being said, being a host of a meeting gives you abilities including:

  • Mute participants
  • Request that a participant mutes or unmutes
  • Stop a participant’s video
  • Request that a participant starts their video
  • Lock the meeting to prevent anyone new from joining

Follow the steps below to become the host of each meeting.

1. Find your Host Key

When your meeting is assigned a virtual meeting your CMA or GR will receive a host key. Only share your host key with other members that agree to be a host or co-host, do not share it publicly. We highly recommend that someone in each meeting claim host.

2. Claim Host

Every time your group has a meeting you have to claim host (this setting is not saved across meetings). To find instructions on how to claim host use the links below:

It’s also recommended that someone is added as a co-host. You can find how to do that here:

If you are the host and you need to leave make sure you don’t end the meeting. You can make someone the host following before you leave these instructions:

3. Using the host controls

Refer to this article on what controls are available to you as the host. Please note that your controls may not match those in the article exactly as we’ve disabled some settings across all meetings.

Zoom Disruptions

If your meeting is experiencing frequent disruptions by unwanted visitors you can refer to this article to learn about further moderation features in Zoom. Suspend Participant Activities is one you may find useful but be sure to educate yourself on how it works before utilizing it. It will mute all participants audio and video and allow you to kick the disruptive person. You then have to enable each person one by one. This will also lock down all other settings including chat, video. Things to reenable would be:

  • Turn off Waiting room
  • Turn off Lock meeting
  • Turn on Chat
  • Turn on Rename themselves
  • Turn on Unmute themselves
  • Turn on Start video