The PathFactory VEX – Zoom Integration allows you to easily embed Zoom meetings or webinars into a session. We leverage Zoom’s Web SDK to place the Zoom meeting or webinar into your browser. No authentication to your Zoom account is required, all you need is the Meeting/Webinar ID and the passcode if one has been set.
When configuring your session you can set the Live Content Type to Zoom. By doing so you’ll notice the following fields appear:
Zoom Meeting Number – This is simply the Meeting ID of the Zoom webinar or meeting you’ve created for this particular session.
Zoom Attendee Authentication – If your Zoom meeting doesn’t have a password you can simply select No Password. If you have a password but do not want your attendees to have to enter it choose Apply Password Automatically For Attendee. If you wish to prompt your attendees to enter a password then choose Require Password From Attendee. Note: if you choose this option you should be sure attendees know the password for the sessions you’d like them to attend. A smart place to include this would be in any reminder or confirmation emails sent from your marketing automation platform.
When your Zoom powered session is configured correctly, attending your session will produce a Zoom meeting inside your VEX session:
Those hosting, facilitating, or administering the meeting, join the Zoom via their desktop client, whereas attendees will join the Zoom within VEX. Because of this you will not use the Zoom integration into your marketing platform. You simply send attendees to VEX, and then use engagement data returned by PathFactory to determine attendance. For more information on integrations see VEX Data Integrations.
There are constraints in Zoom’s Web SDK which can affect your attendee experience. To learn more about support across devices and browsers see Zoom’s documentation. Other features such as meeting breakout rooms and webinar polling are not available via The Zoom Web SDK at the time of the writing of this article. As Zoom updates it’s SDK and adds support for these features, PathFactory will update it’s implementation of the Zoom Web SDK to support them.
Regarding Zoom Webinars, if you choose “Registration Required” (as shown below) in your Zoom Webinar settings, then the VEX attendee’s email address must be on the registration list to attend the VEX session, whereas the unchecking this box will not restrict VEX session attendees to email addresses who are registered in Zoom. Generally, for Zoom webinars which are exclusively presented inside VEX, we recommend unchecking this box, and requiring registration for session attendance inside VEX instead of Zoom.
Note: as of the writing of this article we cannot use the Zoom Web SDK to house a Zoom Cloud recording inside a VEX session. Recordings should be downloaded as video files then uploaded to a video streaming service such as Vimeo or YouTube, which can then be added to your PathFactory Content Library, and then to your VEX session. Zoom has indicated it is on their roadmap to make cloud recordings available via the Web SDK integration we use in the future.
More information on troubleshooting the attendee experience, including Zoom, see Integrate VEX with Zoom. This is a public facing article and can be sent to your attendees.