[Update] June 13, 2023: Education Plus customers can now scale their meetings to 1,000 attendees, with 500 attendees being viewers.
What’s changing
To help provide a better experience and scale attendance for larger meetings, you can now select “Everyone is a viewer” when creating your Calendar invite. Viewers are defined as meeting attendees who cannot share their audio or video into the meeting. You can designate attendees who are leading, presenting, or moderating a meeting as co-hosts and contributors.
Who’s impacted
End users
Why you’d use it
If you’re using Google Meet for large meetings, like webinars or town halls, designating attendees as “viewers” helps reduce potential meeting distractions, such as audio disruptions. Further, it keeps the attendees focused on the speaker and content of your meeting.
Configure viewers in Google Meet by going to Video call options (gear icon) > Guests.
When it’s time for the larger group to engage, hosts can transition viewers to contributors. We hope this update creates a more seamless experience for hosting and attending large scale Google Meet calls.
You can switch a user between viewer and contributor via the people panel
Viewers will be able to use Meet features such as Q&As and polls. Viewers will not be able to use in-meeting chat or emoji reactions — viewer support for these features is coming in the future. We’ll provide an update here on the Workspace Updates blog at that time.
Additional details
Google Workspace Enterprise Plus, Enterprise Essentials Plus, and Education Plus customers can scale their meetings to 1,000 attendees, with 500 attendees being viewers
Using these new viewer and contributor roles, Google Workspace Enterprise Plus and Enterprise Essentials Plus can expand the maximum number of meeting attendees to 1,000 — an increase from 500. If a host does not pre-configure the meeting, all users will be designated as viewers after 500 contributors have joined the call.
The maximum number of meeting attendees will not change for the remaining Google Workspace editions that are receiving the viewer functionality.
Getting started
- Admins: There is no admin control for this feature, nor is admin action required.
- End users:
- When creating or editing a meeting in Calendar, you can configure viewers by going to Video call options (gear icon) > Guests.
- During the meeting, you can transition viewers to contributors via the people panel using the three-dot overflow menu and selecting “make a contributor”.
Rollout pace
- Rapid and Scheduled Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) starting on June 2, 2023
Availability
Assign viewers
- Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, Teaching & Learning upgrade, and Education Plus customers
1,000 meeting attendees
- Available for Google Workspace Enterprise Plus, Enterprise Essentials Plus, and Education Plus customers