When running webinars we like to refer to three different roles of the webinar, the host, speakers and audience.

Host: The webinar host enters the webinar room over the backend. They have full control over the webinar room, can switch between cameras and screens and can produce the webinar from here. They can go live and end the webinar and have a full overview of who is watching the webinar. There can only be one host in the room at each time. Before joining as a host it is important to test your connection before going live.

Speaker: The speaker gets invited to the webinar, either with a link or an invitation email. Speakers have to access the webinar room over a unique URL. They are able to share screens and slides and mute and unmute themselves but are not able to control what is broadcast out to the audience. There can be a maximum of 6 speakers in each webinar, including the webinar host. Before joining as a speaker it is important to test your connection with the link in the speaker email.

Audience: The audience will access the webinar by signing up for it. They can ask questions before and during the webinar, which can only be seen by the host or write something in the chat during the webinar, which is visible to anyone. The audience does not connect to the webinar with their camera or microphone. 

Controlling what the audience sees

As a host, you have full control of the webinar room and what is being broadcast out to the audience. The TwentyThree webinar tool is simple to control, but it is imperative to know how to do so. When in the webinar room you will see a large view, as well as smaller views on the lower left hand side.

The large view represents what is being broadcast and thereby what the audience sees. The smaller views represent the streams available in the room, shared by speakers. These can be web camera streams, shared screens and second cameras. These smaller views are not visible to the audience, nor are any of your webinar room controls. To switch between streams, simply click on the box you wish to broadcast to the audience. When using the video playback function, you will need to remember to select a stream after the video finishes in order to broadcast it to the audience, it will not revert back to the previous stream after playback. The same goes for screen sharing, before ending your screen sharing remember to select a stream to be shown to the audience.