Adding a Waiting Room or Passcode to Your Zoom Meeting

Whether you use Zoom for teaching, learning or meetings, we recommend adding a waiting room and/or passcode as a best practice in order to make your meeting more secure. Learn how to add a waiting room and/or a passcode to your Zoom meeting in Canvas or outside of Canvas.

The waiting room feature allows the host to control who enters the meeting and when a participant joins the meeting. As the meeting host, if you enable the waiting room for your meeting, all attendees are placed in a waiting room when they click the link to join your meeting. The host can then admit attendees from the waiting room one by one or admit them all at once.

Add a passcode to your meeting to ensure that only attendees with both the meeting ID and passcode can join your meeting.

Before you start

Must be a Stevens student, faculty or staff member.
To prepare to use Zoom, activate your Stevens Zoom account and install the Zoom desktop client, which offers the best available Zoom experience.

How to Add a Waiting Room and/or Passcode to a Zoom Meeting Scheduled in Canvas

If you schedule course sessions and/or office hours for Zoom in Canvas, please follow these instructions for adding a waiting room and/or a passcode to your meetings.

Step 1: Open your course in Canvas

Step 2: Select Zoom

Step 3: Select Schedule a New Meeting

Step 4: Enter meeting information such as Topic, When, Duration, etc.

Step 5: To add a waiting room to your meeting, under Security, select the checkbox next to Waiting Room

under security there are three check box options, waiting room is the second option

Step 6: To add a passcode to your meeting, select the checkbox next to Passcode and enter the passcode you would like users to use to join the meeting. Please create a passcode that cannot be guessed easily, such as 12345 or the name of the course or instructor.

the first checkbox under security is passcode, when you check it, a text box will appear where you can input the selected password

Step 7: After adding all of the meeting information, select Save to save the meeting.

Step 8: Please share the passcode with your students so that they can join your Zoom session. You can share your passcode via a Canvas Announcement and/or via a Canvas Inbox message.

canvas message telling the students the meeting passcode

How to Add a Passcode or Waiting Room to a Zoom Meeting Scheduled Outside of Canvas

Step 1: Sign into my.stevens.edu and select Zoom

Step 2: Select Meetings

Step 3: If any of your upcoming meetings do not have either a passcode or a waiting room, they will be marked with a red exclamation mark. Add a passcode or waiting room to any of these existing meetings by selecting the meeting name, selecting Edit, and following the instructions below, starting with Step 5.

meetings tab on zoom, next to the meeting name there is a little red circle with an exclamation point in it. this shows there are no passcode or waiting room

Step 4: To create a new meeting, select Schedule a New Meeting and enter the meeting information, such as Topic, When, Duration, etc.

blue button labeled schedule a meeting under the meetings tab in zoom

Step 5: To add a waiting room to your meeting, under Security, select the checkbox next to Waiting Room

under the security there are three checkbox options, waiting room is the second option

the first checkbox under security is passcode, when you check it, a text box will appear where you can input the selected password

Step 7: After adding all of the meeting information, select Save to save the meeting.

For additional information about Zoom meetings, please see this article.

Experiencing an issue or need additional support? Contact our OneIT Team by

Opening a support ticket or
Calling us at 201-380-6599