I wish this were an option too. Knowing only the number of attendees who have joined is not enough, particularly when managing speakers during a live broadcast.
We have experienced situations where a scheduled speaker accidentally joins through the attendee link instead of the speaker link. When that happens, they appear on the backend with the general attendees, but the production team cannot easily identify them from within the webinar or promote them to a speaker role.
The current workaround requires a planner to leave the webinar interface, open the event backend in a separate window, search for the person by name or email, and confirm through their activities that they joined. Even after locating them, we still cannot promote them from attendee to speaker. The speaker must leave the webinar and rejoin using the correct link, which can delay the program, create confusion, and potentially cause dead air during a live event.
This can also happen with last-minute panelists, replacement speakers, or subject-matter experts who are unexpectedly asked to participate in the discussion. A visible attendee list inside the webinar, combined with the ability for a host or producer to promote an attendee to a speaker role, would make live webinar management much more reliable.
At minimum, producers should be able to view and search the live attendee list, distinguish speakers and staff from general attendees, privately message someone who entered through the wrong link, and promote an attendee to a speaker without requiring them to leave and rejoin.
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Shawn Keller
Outreach Coordinator
Midwest Reliability OrganizationUnited States
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