Possible to Disable Meeting Organizer's Ability Unmute Me During a Meeting?

[tnapier]

I believe the feature of allowing the organizer to unmute all participants in a meeting needs to be disabled. It's either disable that feature or allow the participants, via Preferences, to not allow the organizer to unmute them during a meeting.

This can leave an exposed microphone open to everyone in a meeting to hear stuff that should otherwise be muted per the participant's wishes/expectations. I recently was unmuted while having a side conversation with my wife that was somewhat personal. It was during a ten minute break period on a 5-hour meeting, and luckily not many people heard, but it was embarrassing nonetheless. Obviously, it was my fault for not double muting by not muting my mic directly, but I leave that to all of my successful meetings on webex not having this happen in the last several months during this pandemic and for years prior.

Outside of being embarrassing, I believe this leads to privacy concerns overall. Apparently, many conversations were occurring at the same time because, again, this was a break period that everyone was taking advantage of.

[gacui]

Now that 40.10 has rolled out, I am not able to unmute a participant without them asking for their permission.   This is an issue since we use webex for worship services and need to unmute the minister when they stand up to speak.  The computer is not anywhere near them.  Is there any way to disable the feature that asks for permission to unmute?

[andrew108]

I have the same issue I hope this gets fixed soon or will have to migrate to Microsoft teams 

[officeChC]

I recognize the privacy issues but we also have situations in which the moderator needs the ability to unmute.  Please make it an option.  The person getting unmuted should just get a very large, noticeable notification of the unmute.  Another solution would be for the recipient to get the choice at the beginning of the meeting to be unmuted by the moderator.

[Andres Salgado · Accepted solution]

Hi Tnapier,

The host can unmute the participant as you can see in the following link:

https://help.webex.com/en-us/n94aj5j/Mute-or-Unmute-in-Webex-Meetings-Suite

There should be a visual and audible notification when the host unmutes. The only workaround at the moment I can think of is what you mentioned of double muting. 

There is a change in a coming version of Webex 40.10 that should address the concern and should remove unmute availability.

Thanks

Andres

[Dr.BK]

Now that I can't unmute, Webex is no longer usable for class and proctoring. If there is no workaround, I'll have to switch to Teams starting tomorrow.

[EileenTirado_PR]

Thanks!