Waiting Room
The waiting room (guest lobby) holds incoming guests in a queue until a moderator manually approves them. This gives you full control over who enters your meeting and when.
Enabling the Waiting Room
The waiting room is configured before the meeting starts, through your room management interface:
Open the room settings in your management dashboard (bbbserver, Greenlight, or your learning management system).
Enable the option Ask moderator to approve guests before joining.
Save the room settings. The waiting room is now active for all future meetings in this room.
The waiting room configuration is a room-level setting. It is configured outside of BigBlueButton itself, through your management interface (bbbserver dashboard, Greenlight, or LMS). Inside the meeting, you only manage the admission of waiting guests.
Admitting or Rejecting Guests
When a guest tries to join a meeting with the waiting room enabled, they are placed in a queue. As a moderator, you will see a waiting room section in the participant panel:
A notification appears when guests are waiting. The waiting room section shows all pending guests.
For each waiting guest, you can choose one of the following actions:
- Admit — the guest is allowed into the meeting.
- Reject — the guest is denied entry.
You can also use the Admit all button to approve all waiting guests at once.
Common Use Cases
- Security — prevent unknown or unwanted individuals from entering the meeting.
- Controlled meeting start — hold all participants in the waiting room until you are ready to begin.
- Exam situations — ensure that participants enter individually so you can verify their identity.
For public or sensitive meetings, always enable the waiting room. It provides stronger access control than access codes alone and lets you verify each participant before they enter.
If the waiting room is enabled and no moderator is present in the meeting, guests cannot join. Always make sure a moderator enters the meeting first.