Monitoring Chat & Q&A

Monitoring Questions and Discussions

Chat and Q&A

Chat and Q&A

Chat allows you to send messages to other participants within a meeting. You can send a private message to an individual user or you can send a message to everyone in the meeting.

Q&A allows participants to ask questions during the meeting, and for the host and co-hosts to answer their questions either privately, for everyone, or mark them as something to be answered live.

As the host, you can choose who the participants can chat with and you can disable chat entirely. These features can also be managed by your Co-Host or Alternate Host should you choose to designate one to help you.

You can also capture a meeting's chat transcript. Chat can be saved manually or automatically. Auto-save chat will automatically save Chat locally on your computer. You can also manually save your chat when you start local or cloud recording.

Chat in a Zoom Meeting

While in a meeting, select Chat in the meeting controls:

Zoom main menu highlighting Chat

This will open the chat panel on the right. You can type a message into the chat box or select the drop-down menu next to To: send a message to a specific person. You, as the host, can control with whom the participants can chat by selecting the more (...) menu.

Zoom chat panel and dropdown menu

Sharing Documents in Chat

You can share a document with participants by selecting the File button at the bottom of the Chat pane. Once the document has been uploaded and shared participants can download it by clicking on it.

File button to upload a file to Chat.

  1. If you are using a Q&A during your Zoom meeting, give your participants clear instructions on how to use this feature as opposed to using the Chat. For many participants, Zoom Chat has been the primary means for asking questions and chatting.

    How to schedule a meeting with Q&A
    1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal.
    2. In the navigation menu, click Meetings.
    3. Choose to edit an existing meeting or schedule a new meeting.
    4. Under Meeting Options, select the check box to enable Q&A.
    5. Click Schedule.

     

    Edit Q&A options
    1. Click the topic of your meeting.
    2. At the top of the meeting details, click the Q&A tab.
    3. Click Edit to adjust the following settings:
      • Allow anonymous questions: Select this option to allow participants to send questions without providing their name to the host and co-hosts.
      • Allow participants to view: Choose if you want attendees to be able to view answered questions only or view all questions.
        • If you choose for participants to view all questions, you can then enable the following options:
          • Participants can upvote: Participants can view all submitted questions and upvote questions important to them. This can help point out to the host and co-hosts questions that more participants want the answer to.
          • Participants can comment: Participants can view all submitted questions and add additional comments.
    4. Click Save.
      Note: These options can also be configured by the host in the live meeting.

For more information about how to manage the Q&A during your Zoom meeting, click on the link in Additional Resources.

Additional Resources