For the best experience, and to scale attendance for large meetings, enable all participants as viewers. When you enable View only roles, you get the option to also designate some attendees as contributors.
Viewers can:
Learn which Google Workspace editions have View only role
- Observe the meeting
- Raise their hand
- Participate in activities, such as Q&A and polls
- Use reactions
Tips:
- When you are in a View only role, at the bottom, next to the meeting name, “View only” displays.
- If there are any participants in the meeting that are in View only roles, then all reactions sent by any participant are anonymous.
Viewers can't:
- Share audio or video
- Share their screen
- Chat
You can pre-set meeting attendees as viewers in the following Workspace editions:
- Google Workspace Business Standard
- Business Plus
- Enterprise Standard
- Enterprise Essentials
- Education Fundamentals
- Education Standard
- Teaching & Learning upgrade
- Education Plus
- Enterprise Essentials Plus
- Enterprise Plus
Tip: In Enterprise Plus, Enterprise Essentials Plus, and Education Plus, after 500 contributors join, the next 500 automatically join in Viewer Mode.
Turn on Everyone is a viewer
- On your computer, open Google Calendar.
- Create a new meeting and add guests.
- In the Google Calendar meeting invite, open Host controls
.
- Turn on Host management.
- In the "Guests" tab, turn on Everyone is a viewer by default.
- Optional: Add contributors.
- To add contributors, add guests to the invite.
- Tip: If their email doesn't display, make sure they're first added to the invite.
Change a participant from viewer to contributor
Important: A host can move a viewer into a contributor and back to a viewer while on Web or when using Picture-in-Picture mode on the computer.
In a View only role, when a viewer raises their hand, the host or co-host can make the viewer a contributor.
As a host or co-host:
- In the meeting, at the bottom right, select People
.
- Select the viewer
Make a contributor
.
.
Make a contributor