🙋 The waiting room: approving who gets in

Before anyone can say a word in your class, they pass through the waiting room. This page covers who waits, what you see in the approval box, and what Accept and Decline actually do.

Connect Drive first

Student joins require your Google Drive connection. Names save automatically to your app-created Drive roster before a request reaches approval; uploading your own roster is optional. If Drive is disconnected or a save fails, reconnect from the console and have the student retry. A failed save does not admit the student.

New students always wait

Every first-time joiner lands in the waiting room, every time, and no setting can turn it off. A new student enters your join code, their first name and last initial, the screenname they want, and a 4-digit PIN, then they wait. Nothing reaches the chat until you let them in.

This is deliberate: you vet every new screenname, and you see exactly who is asking for it, before it can ever chat.

The one exception is a class you built with a roster import. Those students were vetted when you wrote the sheet, so they are already approved and sign in straight to the chat with the card you printed. Their join code is locked, so no new signup can arrive. The only way a roster student lands in this box is the stricter setting below, which re-holds every returning student on every sign-in.

The approval box

When someone is waiting, a Waiting to join list appears inside Needs you, the box above the chat on the Live tab, with a live count. The Live tab shows a count too, so you can tell someone is waiting even from Setup or Records. Each row shows the student's first name and last initial beside the handle they picked, like "Sam K. · quietfox". The pairing is there so you can judge the screenname with the real kid in view: is the handle appropriate, and does this person belong here?

Each row has two buttons:

• Accept lets them into the chat immediately. Access to student names is audited; the reveal log records the action and student identifiers, not a stored copy of the real name. The record is deliberate, never silent (more on the privacy page).
• Decline is a hard reject: it removes the student and their pending Drive roster entry, and frees the screenname. Use it for an inappropriate handle or someone who shouldn't be here.

A decline isn't a ban. The freed screenname can be tried again, so a student with a poor handle can simply rejoin with a better one.

Returning students come straight back

Once approved, a student signs back in from any device, Chromebook or laptop, with the join code, their screenname, and their PIN. Signing in on a new device signs out the old one. By default they skip the waiting room and land right in class.

The stricter mode

In Setup, under Joining, there is a switch called Approve returning students. Turned on, every sign-in lands back in the waiting room for your OK, even an already-approved student with the correct PIN.

Two things this switch never changes:

• New students always need your approval the first time, switch on or off.
• Turning it off never admits anyone already sitting in the box. The box only drains through Accept and Decline.

What the student sees

While they wait, the student's screen shows a full waiting-room card: "You're in the waiting room," with a note that the page opens up on its own the moment you let them in. No refreshing, no watching for a signal. The instant you click Accept, their chat opens; if you Decline, their connection closes. (Their whole side of teachChat is covered on the student page.)

Forgotten PINs

Forgotten PINs are a when, not an if. On the Live tab, click the student's name in the Students list to open their panel, then press Reset sign-in PIN. Type a new 4-digit PIN, hand it over, and they sign back in with it right away.

teachChat also slows down repeated wrong-PIN attempts, so a classmate can't sit and guess a peer's PIN. A student who fumbles too many times sees a short "wait and try again" cooldown that grows with each miss.

If a student swears their PIN "stopped working," just reset it. The reset clears the wrong-guess cooldown too, so they're back in on the very next try.

The waiting room is the front gate: every new student pauses there once, you decide who gets in, and from then on their screenname and PIN carry them the rest of the way.