With Xola Zoom Integration, you will be able to host online virtual experiences for your guests. You can schedule a Zoom meeting when a booking is made for your online experiences. This integration will also automatically include joining instructions in confirmation emails sent to your guests.
Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise video communications, with an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, collaboration, chat, and webinars across mobile devices, desktops, telephones, and room systems. Zoom Rooms is the original software-based conference room solution used around the world in board, conference, huddle, and training rooms, as well as executive offices and classrooms. More about Zoom.
You will need to have a Zoom account set up, in order to use this feature. To learn more about Zoom, and how to sign up, please go here: https://zoom.us/pricing
What's covered in this article:
How to enable
- Navigate to the Xola App Store by clicking the App Store tab in the upper right-hand corner.
- Locate Zoom and select the App Store tile.
- Click the green "Install" button
Once, you agree to the terms and conditions, you will be asked to Authorize your Zoom account.
A new window will appear, and you will be asked Authorize and to sign in to your Zoom account, if you are not already. This will link your Xola and Zoom accounts together.
Once you are signed in you will be taken back to Xola, and it will show that the setup was successful.
Note: To uninstall Zoom for Xola, simply go to the App Store, find the Zoom tile, and click Uninstall
How to set up
Once installed from the App Store you can set up an existing or create a new virtual experience, in your listings.
Set up new experience:
- Go to Product> Listings> Create a Listing
- Begin creating a listing as normal.
- To learn more about how to create a listing, click here.
- Under the Title, there will be a toggle that says This is an online experience, toggle this on in order to create the virtual experience for that listing.
- You will set up the listing as normal, but will not be required to put a meeting location in order to save the listing.
- Click Save.
- On the left-hand side, you will be able to set your settings for your Virtual Meeting.
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Virtual meeting open time:
- Virtual meeting opens x [minute(s)/hour(s)] before scheduled time
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Do not allow late guests:
- Prevent late guests from joining the virtual meeting x [minute(s), hour(s)] after the scheduled start time
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Require full payment:
- If Disabled: You do not require full payment to allow customers to join the meeting
- If Enabled: You require full payment to allow customers to join the meeting. Customers will be redirected to the payment screen in order to complete payment when they try to log in for an experience.
Set up existing experience:
- Go to Product> Listings> Find the listings> Hover over and hit Edit Listing
- Under the Title, there will be a toggle that says This is an online experience, toggle this on in order to create the virtual experience for that listing.
- Click Save.
- On the left-hand side, you will be able to set your settings for your Virtual Meeting.
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-
Virtual meeting open time:
- Virtual meeting opens x [minute(s)/hour(s)] before scheduled time
-
Do not allow late guests:
- Prevent late guests from joining the virtual meeting x [minute(s), hour(s)] after the scheduled start time
-
Require full payment:
- If Disabled: You do not require full payment to allow customers to join the meeting
- If Enabled: You require full payment to allow customers to join the meeting. Customers will be redirected to the payment screen in order to complete payment when they try to log in for an experience.
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Virtual meeting open time:
Zoom Users as Equipment
Now that you have linked your Zoom account, with Xola and created your experiences, you can now link your Zoom users with your Equipment Management in order to not overbook your employees who will be running the virtual experiences.
- Go to Settings> Apps> Zoom> Configure
- Here you will see a list of all User on your Zoom account.
- Next to their name, you can choose for them to be linked to an existing piece of equipment, or become a new piece of equipment.
- If you select Create New Equipment, it will automatically add them to your Equipment Management. To view this, go to Resources>Equipment Management. You will now notice a blue Zoom logo next to the new piece of equipment.
- From here click Edit, you can edit your equipment as normal. You will need to also add the listings this user will be able to run.
To learn more about how Equipment Management works, and tips on how to set it up, please click here.
How to make a booking
Website Checkout
When your customer goes to visit your website, they will see in the Excerpt that the experience is an online experience. They continue through the checkout as normal and will see the times for your experience in their timezone, set by their browser, noted in blue below the times.
After checkout, the customer will be sent a confirmation email, and in the meeting location, it will give them the link to join the meeting from Zoom. It will also tell them based on your settings, how much in advance to join the meeting.
This customer will also receive this link in a reminder email. As well as your guides, if they are assigned to that timeslot, and your Primary email will receive a notification with the meeting link.
Back office Booking
If a customer calls for you to make a booking, you will do this as a normal back office booking.
- Click the green Book button> and choose your Listing
- Once you enter the number of guests, you will then enter your guest's city. This will help determine the customer's timezone for you.
- Note: You will need to enter the city first followed by the state, and the drop-down will populate while you type, for you to select the right location.
- You can choose to look at times in your timezone, or the customer timezone.
- After you choose a time you will continue the booking as normal.
- In the purchases tab, you will see the booking details as normal, but now there is an extra space for the timezone that the experience was booked in under the reservations details.
Note: All emails that have the time stated in them will be sent to your customer with the timezone they are in, or selected on checkout.
How to start a meeting
From the Dashboard
From your Dashboard, you can start the Zoom meeting for the List, Day, Week, and even the Month view. In the Day and Week view, once your experience is ready to start, you will click on the timeslot and you will see a button that says Start Meeting, click and you will start your Zoom room.
In the List view, once your experience is ready to start you will see a button at the top of the Roster that says Start Online Experience, click and you will start your Zoom room.
Note: If you need to change the meeting link, for any reason, you can by clicking the gear icon next to the Online Experience notation at the top of the Roster.
Your Customers Experience
When your customer clicks on the link, if all the conditions defined by your settings are met and the booking is valid for the given event, they are redirected to the zoom meeting URL.
If the settings and the booking are not valid, Xola will display a screen that explains the situation to the customer, and why the meeting can not be started.
For example, if the customer clicks on the link and it is at the wrong time, it will show them how much longer until the event starts:
If the booking is canceled, they will get a cancellation email and if someone still clicks on the link from the original confirmation email, they will get a message with "Your booking has been canceled"
If your customer has a payment due on the booking, when they click the link they will be given a screen asking them to pay the balance, before the experience can start. They will simply click Pay Now and be taken to a checkout screen to pay the balance. Once, they pay they can hit Payment Complete to begin the experience if it is time.
How to uninstall
- Login to your Xola account as the primary account or an admin account.
- Navigate to the Xola App Store by clicking the App Store tab in the upper right-hand corner.
- Locate Zoom and select the App Store tile.
- Click the red "Uninstall" button and confirm by clicking the red "Uninstall" button in the modal.
- This uninstalls the app from Xola and your Zoom meetings will no longer be managed by Xola.
- Login to your Zoom account.
- Navigate to the Zoom Marketplace and click Manage > Installed Apps
- Find the Xola app and click "Uninstall".
- This revokes all Zoom permissions previously granted to the app.