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Configuring chat

Your webinar’s chat can be configured before and during the webinar. Learn how to set it up in the way that works best for your webinar.

Tim avatar
Written by Tim
Updated today

Your webinar’s chat function can be configured both before and during the session. This lets you set the right option in advance so you can start broadcasting with confidence, while still having the flexibility to adjust it as needed during the webinar.

Types of chat

There are three types of chat that can be used during your webinars. They are as follows:

  • Public chat

    Open the ‘Public’ tab to find the public chat. The public chat can be seen by everyone in the webinar. By default, the public chat is available 5 minutes before the webinar starts.

  • Private chat

    Open the ‘Private’ tab to find the private conversations. These are conversations between one specific viewer and the webinar team. You can use the ‘Latest messages’ button to quickly review which private conversations have new messages. By default, the private chat is available 5 minutes before the webinar starts.

  • Team chat

    Open the ‘Team’ tab to find the presenter chat. The team chat can only be seen by your webinar team. This type of chat has no configuration options.

Configuring the public chat

Changing the public chat setting before the webinar

Follow the steps below to change your webinar’s public chat setting before the webinar:

  1. Find your webinar in your webinar overview and click its title

  2. Click the ‘Edit webinar’ button

  3. Go to ‘Webinar’

  4. Go to ‘Chat settings’

  5. Choose your desired public chat setting

An image of the three public chat settings in the webinar wizard

The change saves automatically. Keep in mind that this is the starting chat setting for your webinar; it can still be changed during the webinar as well!

To learn more about changing the public chat setting during your webinar, please read this article.

Available public chat settings

The public chat has three available settings:

  • Disabled

    This setting disables the public chat entirely. Nobody in the webinar can see the public chat or send messages.

  • Restricted

    When the restricted setting is chosen, only webinar team members can send messages in the public chat. Viewers can only read the messages.

  • Public

    When the public chat is set to public, both webinar team members and viewers can read and send messages in the public chat.

Limit chat history visible to viewers

By default, when a viewer joins a webinar, they will only see public chat messages from that moment onward. However, if you wish to enable viewers to access the entire chat history, including messages exchanged before they joined the webinar, you have the option to toggle the 'Limit viewers' chat history' setting. To do this, follow the steps below:

  1. Find your webinar in your webinar overview and click its title

  2. Click the ‘Edit webinar’ button

  3. Go to ‘Webinar’

  4. Go to ‘Chat settings’

  5. Toggle the switch next to ‘Limit viewers’ chat history’

An image of the 'Limit viewers' chat history' switch

When the switch is off, viewers can see all messages that were exchanged during the webinar, even those that were sent before they joined.

Display viewer's last name in public chat

By default, only the first name of viewers is displayed in the public chat, even when you collect the last name during the registration. Enabling this setting makes it so that last names are also displayed when viewers send a chat message. The last name of presenters and moderators will always be displayed regardless of this setting.

Follow these steps to display the last names of your webinar viewers in the public chat:

  1. Find your webinar in your webinar overview and click its title

  2. Click the ‘Edit webinar’ button

  3. Go to ‘Webinar’

  4. Go to ‘Chat settings’

  5. Toggle the switch next to ‘Display viewer's last name in public chat’

An image of the 'Display viewer's last name in public chat' switch

Please note! This setting is only visible when a last name field has been added to the registration page.

Configuring the private chat

Enabling or disabling the private chat before the webinar

Follow the steps below to toggle your webinar’s private chat before the webinar:

  1. Find your webinar in your webinar overview and click its title

  2. Click the ‘Edit webinar’ button

  3. Go to ‘Webinar’

  4. Go to ‘Chat settings’

  5. Toggle the switch next to ‘Private chat’

An image of the 'Private chat' switch

The change saves automatically. Keep in mind that this is the starting chat setting for your webinar; it can still be changed during your webinar as well!

To learn more about changing the public chat setting during your webinar, please read this article.

Forward all incoming private chat messages to an email address

It’s possible to forward all incoming private chat messages to an email address. This is especially useful for automated webinars where no moderator is present. Follow the steps below to configure this option:

  1. Find your webinar in your webinar overview and click its title

  2. Click the ‘Edit webinar’ button

  3. Go to ‘Webinar’

  4. Go to ‘Chat settings’

  5. Toggle the switch next to ‘Forward all incoming private chat questions to an email address’

  6. The email address that receives the questions is set to the account’s email address by default, but it can be changed to any email address you’d like

An image of the 'Forward all incoming private chat questions to an email address' setting

All private chat messages will now be forwarded to the specified email address.

Automation rules for private chat

Enable automation rules to work with multiple moderators and easily manage chat conversations. There are a number of automation rules to help you handle large numbers of chats by automatically assigning chats according to your preference. Follow the steps below to configure these settings:

  1. Find your webinar in your webinar overview and click its title

  2. Click the ‘Edit webinar’ button

  3. Go to ‘Webinar’

  4. Go to ‘Chat settings’

  5. Toggle the switch next to the automation rule you want to use

There are three different available automation rules.

  • Assign unassigned conversations automatically to the person who opens them

    This rule speaks for itself; the first person to open the conversation is assigned to it.

  • Assign unassigned conversations automatically to the person who replies first

    This means that the chat will be assigned to the person who responds first. You can open the chat without being assigned to it.

  • Assign new incoming conversations automatically to the next moderator (round-robin)

    Each new chat is assigned in alphabetical order to a moderator with the least number of assigned chats. The presenter is not included.

An image of the private chat automation options

Other settings

Webinar team chat names

The names that are displayed for your webinar team members are the names they were added as team members with. This means that their chat names can be edited by editing the webinar team member itself. Follow the steps in this article to edit your webinar team members.

Avatars

Webinar chat profile pictures are dependent on Gravatar, which is a system where you can upload an avatar that is then used across all sites that support it. Both webinar team members and webinar viewers can use this system to have a profile picture in the chat. You can read more about avatars in this article.

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