Much like an in-person meeting, you want to limit distractions in online meetings. Depending on the audience, you also want to limit who can present, speak, or chat amongst the attendees.
The actions listed below should be taken to secure meetings, even if you do not discuss sensitive information, especially in publicly advertised meetings:
- Familiarize yourself with in-meeting techniques to mute, expel, and lock meetings (where available).
- Be conscientious of where you share your meeting information
- Use passwords (where available)
- Limit attendance via registration and identifying unknown or suspicious attendees (where available)
- Disable screen sharing for attendees (where available) to prevent others from sharing their screen unless the host explicitly gives those privileges in-meeting
- Disable file sharing for attendees (where available) to stop photobombing and prevent sending of malware
- Disable chat for attendees to everyone or anyone that is not a host/panelist. Only allow chat between the participants and the host (where available)
- Do not allow removed participants to rejoin meeting (where available)
- Limit the use of personal meeting rooms, deferring to scheduled meetings as possible
If you need assistance implementing these options for supported meeting services, contact the ITS Support Center. Specific instructions for Class Collaborate (formerly Blackboard Collaborate Ultra), Microsoft Teams, and Zoom are provided below.
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Microsoft Teams
Scheduling meeting:
When scheduling Microsoft Teams meetings in Outlook, Outlook on the Web, or via the Teams calendar, schedulers can change who bypasses the lobby and who can present (share content). These options are made by clicking "Meeting options" in the body of the calendar invite and will open in a web browser and explained online on the Change participant settings for a Teams meeting page.
Options available to edit are:
- Who can bypass the lobby?
- People in my organization (default)
- Anonymous, federated, and call-in users (where available) will be put into a lobby.
- People in my organization and trusted organizations
- Anonymous and call-in users (where available) will be put into a lobby.
- Everyone
- Who can present?
- Everyone (default)
- People in my organization
- Specific people
- Only me
Advertising your meeting:
Be conscientious of where you are posting your meeting information.
- Internal meetings should not be posted on publicly available websites, such as social media. Suggested locations or methods to post events include:
- Classes: Post online meeting information in Blackboard or email it to your students
- Staff & Employee meetings: Put meeting information on individual calendars
- Interviews: Contact the candidate directly or using personal calendars
- Orientation & Admissions type (large) virtual events: Require registration with attendees being emailed a link upon registration approval
- When social media is desired:
- Be conscientious of the decisions made during scheduling. Edit previously scheduled meetings to make use of secure practices described above.
- Familiarize yourself with the in-meeting controls to mute/expel participants.
During meeting:
Once connected to your meeting, you can increase meeting security by being familiar with in-meeting controls to mute/expel participants.
- NEVER allow any participant to remotely control your computer (Microsoft Teams will prompt you to grant or deny permission if a participant requests control).
- Remove participants by right-clicking the name of the offender and choose "Remove participant."
- Mute participants by right-clicking the name of the user and choose "Mute."
- If you choose to share a PowerPoint file in a meeting, participants will get some special capabilities:
- They'll be able to move around to different slides without interrupting the main presentation. If you don't want people to be able to navigate through a PowerPoint file independently you're sharing, select the "eye" (it's next to Stop presenting) to prevent this.
- It is possible to modify the meeting options overlooked in scheduling while a meeting is ongoing. The change, when saved, will impact the running meeting within seconds. It also affects any future occurrences of the meeting. These settings include "Who can bypass the lobby" and "Who can present."
- Do this by opening the Outlook or Teams' calendar details and choose "Meeting options." This will open the meeting options in a web browser.
Zoom
Scheduling meeting:
Schedulers can be security conscious before the first guest is invited to the meeting. Using one or more of the settings below adds layers of protection to your meeting.
- Registration
- Require attendee registration. Once scheduled, edit the meeting, so approval is changed from Automatic (default) to Manual approval. You may want certain fields in the registration or add custom questions to your registration. Once approved, the user is given the meeting number and URL.
- Require a meeting password
- When following the meeting URL, the user will NOT be prompted for a password. Once in the meeting, the password will be displayed to the attendee in the Meeting information pane.
- Uncheck (disable) "Enable join before host"
- Until the host joins, users will be unable to interact with other guests. You can then mute or expel people and further lock the meeting as needed after you join.
- Enable waiting room
- The meeting will alert you as to who is in the waiting room. You may admit the users with whom you are familiar.
- Choose Only authenticated users can join if your attendees are all Mason faculty and staff.
- All active Mason employees, faculty, and students are eligible for a Zoom account. To be assigned a license, the user will only have to log into zoom.us, and our Mason authentication system will create an account for the user. If registration is enabled and the Mason individual has never signed into Zoom previously, they may be prompted to create an account.
Advertising your meeting:
Be conscientious of where you are posting your meeting information.
- Internal meetings should not be posted on publicly available websites, such as social media. Suggested locations or methods to post events include:
- Classes: Post online meeting information in Blackboard or email it to your students
- Staff & Employee meetings: Put meeting information on individual calendars
- Interviews: Contact the candidate directly or using personal calendars
- Orientation & Admissions type (large) virtual events: Require registration with attendees being emailed a link upon registration approval
- When social media is desired:
- Be conscientious of the decisions made during scheduling. Edit previously scheduled meetings to make use of secure practices described above.
- Familiarize yourself with the in-meeting controls to mute/expel participants.
During the meeting:
Once connected to your meeting, you can increase meeting security by being familiar with in-meeting controls to mute/expel participants. See detailed Zoom instructions for more information, including device and platform-specific instructions.
- Lock the Meeting: when you're in the meeting, click Participants at the bottom of your Zoom window. In the participant's pop-up box, you will see a button that says Lock Meeting. No new participants can join when you lock the meeting, even if they have the meeting ID and password.
- Expel a Participant: still in the participants menu, you can mouse over a participant's name, and several options will appear, including Remove. Click that to kick a participant out of the meeting. They can't get back in if you then click Lock Meeting.
- Enable Waiting Room: Enables Waiting Room for incoming new participants or move current participants into the Waiting Room.
- Prevent Participants from Screen Sharing: In the host controls, click the arrow next to Share Screen and click Advanced Sharing Options. Under "Who can share?" choose "Only Host" and close the window.
- Chat: Hosts can disable attendees from being able to use chat to communicate with others. Chat may be limited to No one, Host only, Everyone publicly. Consider disabling to No one or Host only. With the Chat dialog box open in the meeting, the host can click the ellipses (…) and choose the appropriate Chat setting.
- Attendee On-Hold: if you need a private moment, you can put attendees on hold. The attendee's video and audio connections will be disabled momentarily. Click on the attendee's video thumbnail and select Start Attendee On-Hold to activate this feature.
- Disabling Video: Hosts can turn participant video off and request to start participant video. This will allow hosts to block unwanted, distracting, or inappropriate gestures on video.
- Mute participants or Mute All: Instructors can mute and unmute participants individually or all at once. This will allow instructors to block unwanted, distracting, or inappropriate noise from the meeting.
Class Collaborate (formerly Blackboard Collaborate Ultra)
Scheduling meeting:
- Guest links
- Next to the course room or a scheduled session, click the More button and then choose either Get guest link or Edit settings to view and copy the guest link.
- Choose if guests will be participants or have a role with additional privileges.
- Send users the guest link via email or other methods.
- Consider turning off the anonymous dial-in phone number in session settings. While this removes this backup audio option, accessing Collaborate via your phone's browser or the Blackboard app is a good alternative.
- By default, students can also see the anonymous dial-in phone number for the session. This number can be turned off in the session settings by unchecking Allow attendees to join the session using a telephone.
- This prevents an anonymous user from calling in and forces everyone to use audio through their computer (unfortunately, this also prevents users from dialing the number as a backup if they are having computer problems.)
- Consider removing student default privileges, also in session settings. You can turn off the ability to write on the whiteboard, chat, turn on the mic and video.
- These options can be changed anytime during a session, or you can promote a student to a Presenter role if they need to talk or share content.
- To do this when creating or editing a session, look under Session Settings to uncheck these permissions.
Advertising your meeting:
Be conscientious of where you are posting your meeting information.
- Do not post the guest link publicly (e.g., on an open website, etc.).
- Do not share the guest link with students. Students do not see the guest link when they access Collaborate in your Blackboard course.
During meeting:
- During a session, student privileges can be turned on and off by clicking the Settings gear icon in the purple tab, then Session Settings.
- These settings can be changed multiple times during a session.
- For a very secure session, remove all participant tools and then promote one person at a time to the presenter role if that person used the hand raise function and needed to speak or present content.
- Remove a participant if needed.
- In the Participant Panel (under the purple tab) click the control menu (circle, three dots) next to a name, and choose Remove from session.
- If the participant joined from within a Blackboard course, they cannot rejoin
- Guest users can rejoin a session
- In the Participant Panel (under the purple tab) click the control menu (circle, three dots) next to a name, and choose Remove from session.
For more information, see Introduction to Class Collaborate.