Attendees can enter the waiting room immediately after they register for the event, giving them a first look into your event
Previously, when attendees completed the registration process, they would be redirected back to the landing page, which does not offer many different customization options for sponsored programming beyond the static header image.
Now, attendees can enter the waiting room immediately after they register for the event. Compared to the landing page, the waiting room offers more customization options and sponsored programming spaces, improving the event experience for hosts, sponsors and attendees alike.
Note: If you activate this feature, your session’s waiting room will be open to attendees as soon as they register for your session (When this feature is not active, waiting rooms open to attendees either 15 or 30 minutes before the session begins).
In this article, you’ll learn how to:
- Let attendees enter the waiting room immediately after they complete registration
- Play your waiting room videos and audio files on a loop
- Saving Your Waiting Room Customization Options
- How to test this feature (and your waiting room functionality as a whole)
How can I allow attendees to enter the waiting room after they complete registration?
Follow the steps below to allow attendees to enter your session’s waiting room after they finish registering for your session.
Best Practice Recommendation: Pre-set these values before the webinar opens for presenters for optimal testing and practice time.
1. Log into your webinar and select the Manage Webinar tab. On the left-hand menu of this page, select Waiting Room.
2. From there, you will proceed to your session’s Waiting Room Settings. Under When Can Attendees Enter the Waiting Room?, select Can enter the waiting room as soon as registration is complete. This ensures that attendees will be able to enter the waiting room immediately after they have finished registration.
Click Save to complete.
Will this feature affect any other settings in my session’s waiting room?
Note that this feature effectively extends the duration of your session’s waiting room. Instead of opening 15 or 30 minutes before your session begins, the waiting room opens as soon as someone hits confirm.
This means that your waiting room’s videos and audio clips are not limited by the duration of the waiting room as they are in the other waiting room options.
To do this, follow the steps below:
1. To customize your session’s waiting room, stay on the Waiting Room Settings page (pictured above). Scroll down to the Waiting Room Preview and select Customize...
2. From there, you will proceed to an editor (pictured below), where you can adjust your session’s audio and video settings.
Background Video Settings
If you would like to play a video, locate Play a video? and select Yes.
To loop your video, locate Loop video? and select Yes.
You will need to select the “Always play from the beginning option”, Sync from Waiting Room start time Coming Soon for this waiting room option.
Background Audio Settings
If you would like to play an audio file, locate Play an audio file? and select Yes.
To loop your audio, locate Loop audio file? and select Yes.
How Can I Save my Waiting Room Settings for Future Webinars?
If you plan to apply these waiting room settings to future webinars, we highly recommend saving this webinar as a Live Webinar Template. This copies all of your webinar’s settings into a reusable template, so you don’t need to manually activate them for future sessions.
More information available for you here.
How Can I Test this Feature?
After adjusting your waiting room settings, we recommend entering your waiting room as an attendee before rolling it out to your own guests. This will allow you to identify any settings or errors that you need to change before you go live.
The following workflow highlights how the attendee entry process will look without auto enter or one click registration enabled.
Follow these steps to test this feature:
1. While logged into your Admin, Host or Presenter with Manage Webinar rights account, open a Private/incognito window on your browser. Using Private/Incognito mode ensures that you can register for your event in the same way as an attendee who doesn’t have a BigMarker account. More information on how to open an incognito/private window
2. Copy/paste your session’s registration link into your browser. Register for your session and enter the live webinar.
Note: You will need to exit the confirmation page and go back to the landing page before entering the live webinar.
3. From there, you will proceed to your session’s waiting room, where you can see the video and audio file you have previously loaded.