By failing to prepare, you prepare to fail. That’s why it’s essential to properly test a webinar beforehand.

The test is meant to check all technical and functional features of the webinar so everything will run smoothly when the audience is there to witness the presentation. You’ll be able to start the real webinar with confidence.

One of the nice things about testing is the ability to test as often as you’d like!

From your webinar overview, select the webinar you want to test by clicking on its title. You can start the webinar's dry run at any given moment by clicking on 'Dry run'.

After the preparation screen, you’ll find yourself in the configuration screen for the dry run. You aren’t live yet; to go live, you will have to enter the webinar room and then click ‘Start dry run’.

When entering the test webinar for the first time, your browser will ask for permission to use your camera and microphone.

Choose 'Allow' and you will find yourself in the preparation screen. This is where you select the camera and microphone you want to use.

The gray bar below the microphone selection is the audio indicator. Speak into the microphone and the bar will indicate whether or not audio is being picked up.

Next, let’s take a quick look at the two buttons above the camera and microphone selection.

The left one, with the camera icon, allows you to toggle your camera.

The right one, with the microphone icon, allows you to toggle your microphone.

Now that you’ve selected your camera and microphone and determined what you want enabled and disabled, click ‘Enter webinar’ and you will be taken to the webinar room. Don’t worry! All of these settings can still be changed later.

As mentioned above, camera and microphone settings can still be toggled on and off in the webinar room itself.

To access the settings from the webinar room, click on the cogwheel icon in the bottom right of the screen.

This will open a settings window where you can change the selected camera and microphone the same way you did in the configuration screen. It also features the audio indicator to test if your microphone selection is working properly. Once you’ve made your changes, exit the settings window by pressing the ‘x’ at the top right.

Have you got the right camera and microphone selected? Great! Let’s move on to adding a viewer to the webinar.

If you want to test your webinar as a viewer yourself, you can open a second tab or window as a test viewer.

In the test webinar room, take a look at the sidebar to the right. In the ‘Attendees’ tab, you will find two icons below ‘Viewers’. Click on the eye icon to open the test webinar as a viewer.

A second option for testing your webinar is inviting a test viewer. This can be done with the invite icon next to the ‘View as attendee’ button.

Click it and a new window will appear. This window shows a list of the test viewers you've invited thus far.

If the test viewer you want to invite is already in this list, you can click the link icon to get their unique link.

To invite someone new, click the 'Invite someone' button.

In the window that appears, fill out the test viewer’s information and then click either ‘Show invitation link’ or ‘Send invitation via email’. If you choose ‘Show invitation link’, make sure to manually share the link with the test viewer so that they can access the webinar.

Now that the tester is present in their viewing environment, they will be able to see your test webinar as soon as it goes live.

Test webinars have the same system requirements as live webinars. You can find those system requirements here.

First, make sure that:

Now click the ‘Start dry run’ button.

In the window that appears, confirm that you want to go live by pressing the ‘Start dry run!’ button.

A notification will appear notifying you of the fact that you're live, and the status indicator at the top left of the screen will change to reflect that.

When you want to end the test webinar, all you have to do is press ‘End dry run’.

In the sidebar to your right, press the 'Content' tab. A list of your presentation slides will appear under 'Slides'.

To start the presentation, click the presentation button below the video. The selected presentation slide will appear on both your and your viewers' screens.

You can use the left and right arrow keys, mouse or a USB remote control to change the presentation slide.

The presentation will be shown above your video by default.

Want to change the presentation layout to full screen? Simply disable your camera. This will make your video disappear from view and enlarge the presentation. You can re-enable your camera when you want to appear on screen again.

If you want to stop sharing your presentation, press the presentation button again.

In the sidebar to your right, press the ‘Content’ tab. A list of the videos added to your webinar will appear when you press 'Videos'.

To start a video injection, click the ‘Start video’ button next to the video in question. The video will begin playing on both your and your viewers’ screens.

Your viewers will be unable to hear or see you while the video is playing. You will be visible and audible again as soon as the video ends.

The audio icon allows you to mute the video for yourself. If you click this icon, your video will have no sound, but the viewers will still be able to hear the video.

If you want to stop the video early, just press the ‘End video’ button.

In the test environment, click on the presentation icon under the video to share your screen.

In the window that appears, select what you’d like to share and then press the ‘Share’ button.

If you want to stop sharing your screen, press the screen share button again.

In the sidebar to your right, press the ‘Interactions’ tab. Click on a type of interaction and the category will unfold to show you all the interactions you’ve made of that type.

Click on the specific interaction you’d like to use. You will get the option to either end the interaction manually or after a set time. Press ‘Play’ to start the interaction. If you select the latter, define the time you want the interaction to be visible for before pressing ‘Play’.

The interaction will show up to the right of your test viewers’ video. The gray dot next to the interaction's name will be red while the interaction is active.

To end an interaction, simply click the ‘Stop interaction button’.

Once you’ve started and ended an interaction, that specific interaction will appear in the ‘Past interactions’ section. There, you can find the result of all the interactions you’ve used in the webinar so far.

You can find both the public and private chat in the sidebar to the right.

When a type of chat is disabled, simply open the tab in the sidebar and click ‘Enable public/private chat’ to enable it.

To disable a type of chat, open its tab and press the speech bubble with the slash through it at the top right.

Keywords: trial, trying, experiencing, guest, powerpoint, examine, adding