Vanilla's Zoom integration streamlines event management by allowing community teams to connect Vanilla events to Zoom meetings and webinars. Doing so enables users to quickly and easily register and/or join your Zoom events right from your Vanilla community.
To use the Zoom integration, you'll first need to:
- Create an App in your company's Zoom account.
- Enable and configure the Zoom addon in Vanilla.
In this article, we'll walk through both of these steps and more.
Create an App in your Zoom account
Vanilla's Zoom integration will communicate with Zoom via API. In order for this to work, you or your IT department will need to create a Server-to-Server OAuth app in Zoom.
📝 NOTE: The OAuth app must be configured using a Zoom account that has permission to do so. This must be done by an Administrator or a user with the ability to view and edit a server-to-server OAuth app.
The Zoom user configuring the OAuth app must also have the following permissions granted by the app:
meeting:read:admin
meeting:write:admin
webinar:read:admin
webinar:write:admin
The process to configure the OAuth app is relatively simple; check out the article below for more information:
After creating the app, Zoom will provide you with an:
- AccountID,
- ClientID, and
- Client Secret.
These will then be used to configure the Zoom addon in your Vanilla community. This process is described in the section below.
Enable & configure the Zoom addon in Vanilla
Let's learn how to enable the Zoom addon and then configure it with the AccountID, ClientID, and Client Secret obtained in the previous section.
Enable the Zoom addon
- Access the Dashboard.
- Navigate to Settings > Addons > Addons.
- Click the Zoom toggle to enable it (it should appear blue).
Configure the Zoom addon
With the addon enabled:
- Click the Zoom addon's Settings button (shown in the image above, this is the button to the left of the on/off toggle).
- Provide the AccountID, ClientID, and Client Secret in their respective fields.
- First Name and Last Name are required to register users for a Zoom event. Because of this, you must select which of your custom profile fields to use as the First and Last Name. This information will then be used to identify users in Zoom when they join your events. If a user has not provided any info for the fields you've selected, their Username will be used instead.
- When finished, click Save to apply your changes.
Connect a Vanilla event to Zoom
When the Zoom addon is enabled and configured, a new field is available when creating and editing Vanilla events: Zoom Meeting ID or URL.
When creating a meeting or webinar in Zoom, you'll copy its meeting ID or URL and paste it into this field when creating or editing an event in Vanilla.
How to join & register for Zoom events
Zoom meetings and webinars can be configured to either:
- Require users to register before joining the event
- Allow users to access the event without registering
This is controlled by the Registration checkbox shown below.
If your Zoom meeting or webinar requires registration, your event details page in Vanilla will automatically include a Registration button users can click to register for the event.
Once registered, users will:
- receive an email from Zoom providing the event details and ability to add the event to their personal calendars
- appear in the Who's Going section
- be able to join the event directly from the event page in Vanilla
- be able to cancel their registration from the event page in Vanilla
If your Zoom meeting or webinar does not require registration, users can:
- Click I'm Interested to express their interest in the event. This adds them to the Who's Interested list, which makes it easy for event organizers and administrators to understand who is interested in an event, enabling them to easily reach out to these potential attendees with additional event information as the event draws near.
- Join the event from the event page in Vanilla.
Once the event has passed, the Register and Join buttons will be deactivated.