Attendee Interaction (New) - Provide Microphone and Webcam to Attendees

Modified on Wed, Aug 10, 2022 at 2:48 AM

Attendee Microphone and Webcam (PODIUM)

One of the major updates provided by Flow 1.6.0 is the ability to provide the microphone and webcam permission (a.k.a. PODIUM) to attendees. We named this "Attendee interaction" or "AI" in short form!

AI Supports Mobile Browsers! Enable desktop mode on the Android browser (Chrome) for instance to use this on your mobile phone. The iOS app does not support attendee interactions. Read more on the "how to" guide for attendees here.

Currently, you can grant permission only to one attendee at a time. You can rotate the podium. An attendee can enable the microphone or webcam (both).

Enabling Attendee Interactions for Your Event

Edit your event or while creating a new event, go to Settings
Expand advanced settings
Click the toggle to enable Attendee Interaction
Save the event

Providing Attendees the Podium

You must start the event first to provide the podium

To simply provide the podium to an attendee,

Click on the name of the attendee - you can also search for the name using the new participant filter
Click on the Microphone button at the right-most area

Attendee Interaction Scenario - an example explaining how you can use AI in a smart way

In an event, let's assume you are in a QA section. Here's the workflow

Ask attendees to raise their hands using the hand-raise function at the bottom left of the attendee chat window
Once they start to raise hands a Red Dot appears in the notification panel to indicate that attendees are requesting the podium
Attendees who raise hands are sorted automatically and the latest requests appear at the top
Click on one of the attendees to provide the podium - you cannot grant the podium to multiple users at once, only one at a time and you rotate the podium to the next requestor and so on
Click the microphone button on the right (it also shows the tooltip "Enable attendee interaction"). Once it is granted, the attendee's raised hand icon goes away and the podium icon appears
On the attendee side, he/she gets a popup dialog box
The attendee also gets the microphone/webcam buttons in the mid-bottom section in the webinar room
The attendee MUST click either the Microphone to enable the Microphone Only and on Webcam to enable BOTH the devices. This step also disables the ability for this users to raise the hand.
It will be restored when the podium is revoked
Once this is enabled, the attendee appears on the new webcam tray on the left in the webinar room and all participants can see/hear him/her
To grant the podium to another attendee, follow the same procedure. Once the permission is revoked, the mic/webcam disappears automatically from the webcam tray
Once everyone completes the roundtable, click on the lat attendee's name in the participant panel and click the microphone icon to turn it off

If you wish to provide the podium to specific users from the list, use the Participant Filter to filter for names. Then you can click on the user and provide the podium - the filter is case-sensitive

Handling Abusive Users

When an Attendee Displays/Speaks Abusive Content...

These unexpected situations can arise during any event. You can immediately take the podium away by clicking on this user and clicking the podium button.

Do Attendees Get Recorded?

If you have not stopped the recording (QA storyboard item provides this ability), attendees who interact (mic/cam) get recorded to the webinar recording. To prevent this, use a QA module to stop the event recording. Once you stop recording, you cannot start it back.

Important Notes and Usecases

The podium is taken away automatically (5 seconds is the threshold) in the following cases

When an attendee enables/uses the mic and then turns off the mic
When an attendee clicks on the Webcam button (enables both mic/cam), turns each device off one by one
When the devices are enabled and the attendee reloads
When an attendee disconnects

The podium is NOT taken away when the attendee is granted the podium but the devices are not enabled and the attendee reloads.

Device Selection

Attendees won't see any microphone/webcam configuration options. The defaults will be selected
Firefox users must Allow and then Remember the permissions in the Firefox browser

Changing the Storyboard Items

If you change the storyboard item while an attendee is granted the podium and use mic/cam, his feed will be turned off (off-air). The attendee can still enable his/her devices once more to speak/show webcam.