Business Productivity

Amazon Chime Adds New Ways to Increase Control and Share Management of Your Meetings

Customers tell us that the way Amazon Chime starts meetings is a productivity game-changer for their companies. Not only does Chime auto-call start meetings on time, meetings can start as soon as someone joins, without waiting for the host, allowing available participants to start getting work done. While this works for a broad set of customers, some customers have told us they need more meeting controls and shared meeting management for sensitive meetings. This blog covers recent updates for moderating and hosting meetings.

Moderated Meetings

Moderated meetings do not allow attendee interactions until a moderator joins and starts the meeting.

This provides a higher level of meeting management, and reduces the chance of other attendees reusing the host’s meeting bridge.

To  schedule a moderated meeting, hosts or their delegates choose the new option Generate a new ID and require moderator to start, and assign a moderator passcode to the Chime meeting ID.

Chime will continue to auto-call attendees when meet@chime.aws is invited to a moderated meeting.Until a moderator joins, attendees are not able to communicate via audio, video, screen share, or chat, and the meeting roster is not displayed.When the meeting host or a delegate joins from an authenticated Chime client, they are immediately recognized as a moderator, and the meeting starts without requiring them to enter the moderator passcode.

Host from Dial-in and In-Room Video Systems

Throughout the day, workers can find themselves in any number of locations needing to join a meeting; when commuting, at their desks, or in a conference room. Sometimes they can use a Chime client, but other times, calling into a meeting using a phone or in-room video system is a better choice. In these situations, IT administrators tell us that meeting hosts and their delegates need to be able to access meeting controls from their phone or from a conference room video system.

Moderated Meetings, Chime

Users joining a moderated meeting and dialing in from a phone or joining from an in-room video system can now control the Chime meeting by entering the meeting passcode. A meeting can be controlled by using the dial pad on the device for key activities such as starting and stopping recording, locking and unlocking the meeting, muting all other attendees, and ending the meeting for all.

Using moderated meetings, hosts that join by dialing in or joining from an in-room video system can use the dial pad on their device to start and stop recording (*2), lock and unlock a meeting (*4), mute all other participants (*97) and end the meeting for all (##). They can dial in and enter the moderator passcode to start the meeting and get rights to control the meeting. If the host joins using the Dial-in option on the Chime mobile app, they are immediately recognized by their unique 13-digit meeting PIN and can join as the moderator without having to enter the passcode.

Now, let’s look at a few examples of how our customers are using these features in their work.

CourtCall offers a Remote Appearance Platform that provides Judges, court staff, attorneys and other participants with efficient, organized and reliable technology services to allow for a simple remote appearance experience.

Courts and other justice partners require a number of unique solutions in order to effectively allow virtual and remote participation.

CourtCall used Chime moderated meetings features to help meet these requirements for a virtual alternative:

  • Enable a hearing to commence and end at the direction of the judge
  • Replicate local practices and accommodate the preferences of individual judges
  • Avoid any disruption in proceedings
  • Allow for immediate caucusing when requested
  • Easily transition between “in-courtroom” and remote hearings and those with both in-person and remote participants
  • Eliminate burdens on Judges or busy courtroom staff
  • Be secure and redundant
  • Scale in real-time
  • Provide real-time support

Using moderated meetings, attorneys and other virtual attendees can connect to the meeting before it starts. All interaction is blocked until the court staff dials into the meeting from a phone and enters the moderator passcode. Court staff can also use the dial pad to lock a meeting or end the meeting for all attendees. These capabilities ensure that no communication happens between the parties until the judge joins the meeting.

“The innovation, scale and power of the Chime platform enables our service offerings to remain at the forefront of justice market technology as we continue to expand the methods by which attorneys can save time and costs for themselves and their clients while also expanding access to justice via remote arraignments, juvenile justice hearings, mental health hearings, visitation and probation hearings just to name a few.” – Bob Alvarado – CEO – CourtCall

Regularly scheduled lunch and learn training sessions are a common way for teams in Amazon to share important information across their organizations. Often, a volunteer leadership team will be in charge of lining up the presenters, sending out the topics and driving attendance, which we found typically includes a catered lunch! While schedules and food options are important, we heard from our customers that multiple people need to be able to record the meeting or manage the audio to allow for flexibility among team members who share coverage of the recurring event.

Using moderated meetings, lunch and learn hosts create a bridge, assign a moderator passcode, and share that passcode with their trusted colleagues to manage the meeting in their absence.

“Moderated meetings is such a useful feature. Our shared leadership model works great now for all aspects of the meetings in this series; from scheduling, lining up presenters, managing the agenda, and day-of facilitation. And yes, catered lunches help to increase in-person attendance.” Julie Silva, Lunch & Learn Committee Co-Chair, Amazon

Getting started

You can start using moderated meetings from the app, phone or in-room video system today. If you are not already using Amazon Chime, you can download the app and sign up for a 30 free trial here.

You can also get more information on Moderated Meetings and Host from Dial-in and In-room video systems from the resources below.

Help Center:

Documentation: