Spotlight 28: Streamline session management using hosts

Anyone who’s hosted an event will know how unpredictable they are and how chaotic they can get. That’s why a lot of time is spent in planning every aspect of the event—team members are given defined roles, everything is checked and rechecked, and speakers are advised to rehearse their lectures. This has only gotten more complicated with the onset of virtual events. Now members aren't just spread across a venue—rather they’re spread across cities and even countries.

When it comes to event management, one duty of event planners is ensuring that sessions run smooth and on time. For this, Backstage allows you to assign hosts and co-hosts for sessions. This way, only those select few members of your team will be able to start and manage sessions during the event. Adding hosts benefits your event (and session) in two ways. First, it tells your team who is in charge of running a particular set of sessions, and second, it guarantees that unauthorized people won't start a session by mistake. Here’s how you can assign and manage hosts for onsite and online events in Backstage.

Onsite events

When you organize an onsite (or in-person) event via Backstage, you'll be asked to assign hosts for each session hall wherein a host can start and run all sessions that take place in that hall. You can add these session halls when creating the event’s program in the Agenda tab of the Microsite Builder. A point to note here is that if your session is not assigned a hall, you won’t be able to add a host for it. This means the session can’t be started on the event day. So make sure you add a hall for all your sessions.

Once that’s done, go to the Hosts tab in the Manage dashboard. Here, you can assign a host and co-hosts for each hall. Also, a member can only be a host or co-host for one hall. On the day of the event, the host or co-hosts will be able to start all sessions hosted in that particular hall from the Present sessions tab of the Conduct dashboard.

Online events

For online (or virtual) events, things are done a little different. Instead of halls, hosts will be assigned for each track. Here again, go to the Hosts tab in the Manage dashboard to assign a host and co-hosts for each track. Like with onsite events, hosts can start all sessions in their respective track on the event day from the Present sessions tab of the Conduct dashboard.

If you’re using our built-in webcast service, Backstage OnAir, you can add any member on your team as a host. However, if you’re using one of our integrated webcast services—be it Zoho Meeting or Zoom Webinar—only Backstage members who are a part of that webcast service’s account can be set as hosts. So make sure you add them to your Zoho Meeting or Zoom account before assigning them as a host. Finally, sessions will be synced with your integrated webcast service only after you assign hosts.

Assign hosts for your sessions and get them running without a hitch. Subscribe to our forum to be updated with the latest Backstage news. If you have any feedback or questions, please write to us at support@zohobackstage.com.

Happy organizing!

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