Why do I need a host for my virtual sessions?

Modified on Thu, 25 Mar 2021 at 04:17 PM

Virtual meeting rooms require one person to be in control of the room. We recommend designating staff to take on the host role, unless your speakers are experienced and can manage being a host. 


Hosts can: 

  • start and end a virtual session
  • mute and unmute participants
  • assign the co-host role to individual presenters in order for them to share their screen
  • and more


To help your first time speakers, the co-host can take care of incoming support questions from attendees, introduce different presenters, keep track of time, end the meeting in a timely manner. 


Each host assumes one of your paid licenses of your virtual service. While a license is in use, this license cannot be used for another session. It is crucial for hosts to wrap up meetings at the end of the session in order to release the license for the next session (the next host) to start. The system will automatically shut down the Zoom event and you want to ensure that speakers are not cut off in the middle of a sentence. 


Adding a Host to a Session in EventPilot

If you are using the Virtual Sessions Add-On with Zoom integration, EventPilot will automatically send all the details to hosts. In EventPilot, all speakers associated to a session receive host information (this requires speaker email addresses have been imported into the CMS and mapped to the private email field). 

In order for your staff to receive the host details too, ensure your staff is added as a speaker to your session data. 

As the speaker title, add "Virtual Session Host" as shown in the example below.