Virtual Events and Webinars
Welcome to 2020, where the events are all virtual and the engagment is even harder to measure.
Good news, though, is that you have a shot at addressing the latter via AlumnIQ!
you can collect registrations through AlumnIQ just like usual
depending on your provider, we can push those people into your conference provider as participants
two hours prior to the event kicking off we'll send a reminder email with connection info
AlumnIQ tracks the clicks on that email to record likely participation
and if your provider allows, post-event we'll pull back actual participation info and automagically check those people in for you
By tying all this together you'll have an easy time aggregating virtual event participation and storing it in your central database for future engagement and solicitation opportunities.
And better still, even post-pandemic you'll have this functionality available to commingle in-person and remote programming to attract the broadest possible audience for your programming.
Revision History
2020-05-25 added notes on updates to reminder email, addition of manual individual resend, clarification on how to handle failed pushes
2020-05-17 initial release
Supported Providers
Ideally, we get your Zoom API keys and that's it. But because letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, we also support what we call "unmanaged" providers -- those that we're linking to but not exchanging data with.
The key difference between managed and unmanaged providers is that in the managed case we talk directly to the provider to push and pull data; unmanaged providers give us no such capability.
Managed providers let us pull participant data down post-event to record the check in for you. Unmanaged providers treat a click in the reminder email as the proxy for recording participation.
Relying on the email will naturally result in some attrition; we don't have email addresses for all registrants and we won't have any knowledge of those who just "show up" in your meeting/webinar without coming through us.
So, again, managed is by far the preferred route.
Provider | Requires API Keys | Can push registrants | Can pull participants | Check ins recorded |
Zoom Meetings (Managed) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Zoom Webinars (Managed) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Zoom Meetings (Unmanaged} | No | No | No | Implied via email click |
Zoom Webinars (Unmanaged} | No | No | No | Implied via email click |
Vimeo | No | No | No | Implied via email click |
Managed providers are far less work in the long run and are worth the effort to get the API keys if at all possible.
Managed Zoom (Meetings and Webinars) Support
Zoom Configuration Requirements
Require Registration
Disable Zoom registration and cancellation emails (confusing duplication with AlumnIQ-generated messaging)
Managed Zoom Activation (updated September 2023)
If you wish to activate managed Zoom support, please file a ticket once you have secured API keys. You may need someone with greater permissions than yours to make it happen.
Go to https://marketplace.zoom.us/
Log in
Top right: Build App
Find "Server to Server OAuth" and click Create
Give it a name (we suggest AlumnIQ Integration)
Copy the AccountID ClientID and Client Secret values - you'll need to share those with us when you're done.
Under Scopes, add the following:
meeting:read:admin
meeting:write:admin
report:read:admin
webinar:read:admin
Proceed to Activation and activate the app.
Pop the credentials from 6 in a ticket in the AlumnIQ admin and we'll take it from there.
If your campus admin has concerns about what we will and will not do with this power:
we will
fetch meeting or webinar metadata
push registrants up into a meeting or webinar
cancel individual registrants for a meeting or webinar
pull (via the reports API) actual participant data (and use that to check people in in the registration system)
we will never, ever
create meetings/webinars via API
modify meetings/webinars via API
view, modify, nor create user accounts via API
Event Setup
A webinar is an event.
Set up the webinar in your provider first before setting up AlumnIQ
Set the times for the event to CAMPUS LOCAL TIME. Since these could happen anywhere, it's critical that we have a consistent timezone for the reminder email and other notifications.
The bottom right side of the event edit screen is the Location panel. In here, select "virtual"
Doing so will cause the webinar config fields to appear:
Because each provider works differently, the fields in the setup screen have varying requirements. Please pay special attention to this; omitting a required field will neuter the reminder email and lead to a panicky ticket when folks don't show up.
| Provider | Auto Update | XID | XID2 | URL | Password | Config | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Zoom Meetings (Managed) | Available | Required | Blank | Auto-populated | Auto-populated | Auto-populated | Zoom Webinars (Managed) | Available | Required | Blank | Auto-populated | Auto-populated | Auto-populated | Zoom Meetings (Unmanaged} | Not available | Required | Blank | Required | Required | Blank | Zoom Webinars (Unmanaged} | Not available | Required | Blank | Required | Required | Blank | Vimeo (Unmanaged} | Not available | Blank | Blank | Required | Blank | Blank
If all of that goes as planned, you'll see the webinar info on the event view screen along with the expected timing of the reminder email (just to drive it home)
** If your managed webinar configuration changes on the provider end, it is CRUCIAL that you open up the Event edit screen and re-save it. We'll fetch the latest info from your web conference provider (including the critical join link and password if applicable).**
Operations (Managed Providers)
as people register, we push their name and email address up to Zoom as participants
the same is done for admin-entered registrations
cancellations will also mark those participants as cancelled
re-registrations or registrations using the same email address will cause problems with sync on the zoom side (a limitation we can't avoid)
If the registrant doesn't get pushed to Zoom:
is the registrant the host of the Zoom event? Hosts cannot also be attendees.
does the registrant have the same email address as another registrant? this is not permitted by Zoom.
Because of Zoom's treatment of "an email address is a person", we run in to all sorts of fun edge cases that aren't normally a problem. Cancellations and re-adds of the same person to the same virtual event are now supported (delicately). Zoom doesn't allow for the complete removal of a registrant, so when they cancel we tell Zoom to mark them as cancelled. If they subsequently re-register, we'll change that status flag to 'approved'. There shouldn't be any need (ever!) to add registrants directly through the Zoom interface. If you do so, we will not have sufficient information to send the reminder - which is critical to our tracking operation.
** A reminder again that your Zoom meeting/webinar must be configured to require registration for the sync to work.**
Operations (Unmanaged Providers)
nothing.
The Reminder Email
Two hours before the event start time we will send out a reminder email with the join link (and password if applicable) to all active registrants
this email contains the start time in CAMPUS LOCAL TIME (with time zone appropriately noted)
this email also contains the EVENT DESCRIPTION so if you (must) include more detail, update that with the relevant info
The email will be wrapped in your standard confirmation template including your header colors and logo. The reply-to address will match the one on the master event as well.
You can resend the reminder email to any registrant individually by clicking the button on their registration record:
And if you're paranoid, you can resend the webinar reminder email to all registrants from the Event Headcount report:
After the Webinar (Managed Providers)
go to Reports
pull up the event headcount report
hit the dropdown to select the webinar event
click the Check In Webinar Attendees button
If all goes well, we'll pull everyone who participated in the meeting/webinar, attempt to match them against registrants, check in the ones that match, and give you back a list of all the ones who do not.
After the Webinar (Unmanaged Providers)
go to Reports
pull up the event headcount report
hit the dropdown to select the webinar event
notice that we recorded email clicks as check ins; compare to your personal notes to manually check in any others who participated
That should do it!
If you have any other suggestions (or other providers you'd prefer to use), please file a ticket and we'll see what we can do.
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