Sessions How-To: External Conference Link to a Passcode-Protected Zoom Meeting

We support using External Conferencing links from Zoom, Google Meet, Google Hangouts or Youtube Live conferencing across our platform. They can be used in place of our free, built-in video chat in Sessions and Exhibitor Booths. 

This tutorial is specifically about how to use Zoom for external conferencing, and to password protect your Zoom meeting so that anyone who clicks the link to join must enter a password before they're connected. 

We also have the ability to embed Zoom at the top of the page. If you'd like to do that instead of link everyone externally to Zoom, please refer to this help article on Zoom Embeds. 

We're going to focus on using this in Sessions, for more information on how to create Sessions on your Event Schedule, please refer to this help article.  

Once you have a session created, you add Programming slots by going into the Program tab of the Editing sidebar. 

Let's take a closer look at the Programming section. 

Clicking the ADD button will bring up a pop up to enter session details. 

From the Type dropdown, choose External Conference URL. Enter the name and duration of your session. 

Now we need the Zoom link. Open your Zoom application, and login. Click Schedule.

In the pop-up that appears, you can set the Topic, Date & Time, whether you want hosts and participants to start with video on or not... there's also a Security section. Here you want to check the box next to Passcode and enter the passcode for your Zoom meeting. 

In our example, we set the password to "EventHub20." Choose a Calendar you want to save this event too, as well. Click Save. 

Now, when you go to your calendar, you'll see the event Zoom created. 

You'll notice that this URL is

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82777908255?pwd=WUxkVVFnU2kzeW5UMjlnZVd3T05ndz09

The end of the URL already has the password embedded in it, you can see that part at the end starting with "?pwd=". You do not want to copy and paste this whole link into your session on EventHub. You just want to take the first part, before the "?pwd=."

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82777908255

Copy this, and return to your Session on EventHub. Paste it in the URL field and click Save. 

Now, when it comes time for your Session, the page will change to display the following: 

This is from the Host view. The attendees will not see this editing sidebar. 

When you click on the Launch "Q&A" button, it will launch Zoom, with a password prompt. 

Type in the Passcode, and you'll be taken to the meeting. If you, as the Event Organizer, setup the Zoom meeting and are logged in, you will not be shown the passcode prompt because you're the Owner of the event. But all attendees will see the passcode prompt to join! Just make sure you send out the Zoom Meeting passcode to them before the session.