Accidents happen. At ReadyTalk we’re committed to helping our customers prevent accidents and mistakes. Each month, ReadyTalk’s Account Specialist Team shares a recent accident and tips for how to avoid it in the future.

On the web conferencing interface, a chairperson can maintain and control the audio conference by muting and un-muting the conference or more specifically, muting, un-muting, disconnecting, and renaming individual audio lines.

In smaller conferences, many chairpersons will decide to leave all the lines un-muted in order to provide a more collaborative platform. In these instances, it is helpful if the chairperson renames each phone number to display the participants’ names instead of numbers. This feature is extremely helpful because it will inform the chairperson who is speaking throughout the conference.

I received a call from a chairperson who left the audio lines un-muted during her conference; however, she did not rename each participant. One of the participants had to leave the conference early because he was driving to the airport. The participant forgot to hang up his phone, and on the way to the airport he expressed extreme road-rage. Because his line was still in the conference, everyone was interrupted and silenced by his colorful language.

In this case, if the chairperson would have renamed each audio participant, she would have seen exactly which line to disconnect before the participant’s road-rage disrupted the entire conference.

Even if you are only hosting an audio only conference, the web interface is a great way to control all the sound and participants during your meeting. Learn more about Using the Web to Manage Your Audio Call.