Webinar and Large Meeting functions in Zoom

The university has at its disposal the Zoom webinar and Large meeting special licences. University staff and students can reserve both of these licences for their own Zoom account for a limited time using a form.

You can reserve Webinar and Large meeting licences using this form.

You can view the reservation status of the webinar licences using the links below. Please note that you cannot make reservations in the reservation calendars yourself. You must use the above form to make a reservation.

• Zoom webinar license 1 -reservation situation (max 1000)
• Zoom webinar license 2 -reservation situation (max 1000)
• Zoom webinar license 3 -reservation situation (max 1000)
• Zoom webinar license 4 -reservation situation (max 1000)
• Zoom webinar license 5 -reservation situation (max 1000)
• Zoom webinar license 6 -reservation situation (max 1000)
• Zoom webinar license 7 -reservation situation (max 3000)

The webinar licence is an additional Zoom functionality that can be added to the user’s own Zoom licence for a fixed period of time, allowing the creation of webinar-type Zoom meetings..

A Zoom webinar differs from a regular Zoom meeting in the following ways, among other things:

• In addition to the chat function, the webinar has a Q&A function that allows participants to ask questions and like the questions of others.
• Webinars also include one additional role, the Panelist.
• The Breakout rooms function is not available in the webinar.

You can create a Zoom webinar in advance as a normal meeting and convert it into a webinar later. The conversion is done using Zoom's browser version https://helsinki.zoom.us/. Log into Zoom.

On the left side of the page, click Meetings.

Click the name of the meeting you want to convert into a webinar. 

You can find the link to edit the meeting at the bottom of the page that opens on the right-hand side: 

After clicking, Zoom asks you to confirm that you want to convert the meeting into a webinar. The conversion cannot be undone. Click the Convert button.

After the conversion, the event can be found in the left-hand side menu in Zoom under Webinars.

The roles of webinar participants are mostly the same as in a regular meeting. However, webinars also include one new role, the panelist, which is not used in regular meetings. Some of the special features of the roles are listed below. You can find a more detailed comparison of the functionality of the different roles at Zoom's own instructions site.

Host

The host can grant alternative host (in advance and only for the University of Helsinki user accounts) and co-host (during the webinar and for all user accounts) permissions.

Only the host can make and edit surveys, authorise other participants to start the closed captions function and end the webinar.

Co-host/Alternative host

In addition to the host, the co-host and alternative host can also begin the webinar, start a survey and manage the participants (mute, upgrade to panelist, etc.)

Panelist

The panelist is a role that is only used in webinars, and which has more extensive permissions than a normal participant, such as using the camera and sharing their screen. The webinar host can grant a participant the permissions of a panelist either in advance or during the webinar. The panelist role can also be assigned in advance to people outside the university.

Attendee

In webinars, normal participants are mainly viewers. As a rule, communication takes place using the chat and Q&A.

Manually Adding a panelist

Go to your webinar using the browser version of Zoom (https://helsinki.zoom.us/ > Webinars) and click on the name of your webinar. At the bottom of the page, select the Invitations tab. Click on the Invite Panelist, to the right of Edit, or if you have a completed CSV file, click on Import from CSV (see instructions related to CSV files).

A new window opens:

1. Enter the name of the panelist
2. Enter the e-mail address of the panelist
3. If there are several panelists, click Add Another Panelist
4. If you want Zoom to send the panelists an invitation immediately after you have saved their information, leave this box checked.
5. Save your list of panelists.

Adding a panelist using a CSV file

If there are many panelists in the webinar, you can add the panelists at once using a CSV file. You can create the CSV file, for example, with Excel (see CSV file template).

Go to your webinar using the browser version of Zoom (https://helsinki.zoom.us/ > Webinars) and click on the name of your webinar. At the bottom of the page, select the Invitations tab. Click Import from CSV on the right side of the Invite Panelist.

If necessary, you can send the panelist a new invitation by clicking the Edit button and then clicking Resend next to the panelist's name.

In addition to the chat function, the webinar has a Q&A function that allows participants to ask questions and like the questions of others. With the default webinar settings, the role of the participants is much more limited than in regular meetings, meaning video and audio are not enabled by default, and participation happens only via the chat and the Q&A function.

Q&A

You can find the Q&A settings tab by clicking on the name of your webinar and scrolling to the bottom of the page. To change the settings, click the Edit button on the right. In the settings, you can choose, for example, whether questions can be asked anonymously and if all participants can see all questions or only the answered ones.

Once the webinar is active, you can open the Q&A window by clicking on the Q&A button at the bottom.

You can practice the use, management and roles of a Zoom webinar before the event itself. You can practice at any time during the validity of the licence. The practice session can be activated in the webinar settings (https://helsinki.zoom.us/ > Webinars) by clicking Edit next to the name of the webinar. The practice session is open to the host, co-hosts and panelists.

The webinar settings also includes a variety of automatic messages that can be sent before and after the webinar. You can find the email settings at https://helsinki.zoom.us/ > Webinars by clicking on the name of the webinar and then selecting the Email Settings tab at the bottom of the page.

Follow-up email

In the webinar settings, you will also find the possibility to send a follow-up e-mail after the webinar both to participants and to people who did not participate. Please note that your webinar licence needs to be valid in order for the follow-up e-mail to be sent from Zoom. For this reason, please make sure already when reserving the licence that it will stay valid for sufficiently long.

The Large meeting function enables accepting 500 people to the regular Zoom meetings created by the user instead of the usual 300-people maximum. A Large meeting does not differ from a regular Zoom meeting otherwise.

Written instructions and videos on how to use the webinar are available in the Helpdesk’s Zoom instructions and Zoom’s own instructions. You should check at least the following before your first webinar.

• Checklist for organising a Zoom event
• Getting started with webinar (Zoom Support site)
• Meeting and Webinar in comparison (Zoom Support site)
• Roles in a webinar (Zoom Support site)
• Using Q&A as the webinar host (Zoom Support site)
• Webinar practice session (Zoom Support site)