Zoom Discourse

:discourse2: Summary Discourse Zoom empowers Discourse administrators and users with a paid Zoom subscription to schedule, manage, and participate in Zoom webinars directly from their Discourse platform.
:hammer_and_wrench: Repository Link https://github.com/discourse/discourse-zoom
:open_book: Install Guide How to install plugins in Discourse

Overview

This plugin integrates Zoom webinars into a Discourse instance. Zoom webinars can be associated with topics, Discourse users can register for webinars and join them when they start.

:warning: Due to Zoom deprecating JWT authentication, as of August 1st 2023, the plugin’s authentication mechanism has changed from JWT (now deprecated, Zoom will remove on September 1st) to Server-to-Server OAuth. Existing users of the plugin need to update their settings.

Features

  • When a Zoom webinar starts, the “Register” button automatically switches to “Join”, and clicking it launches the webinar using the Zoom SDK in a dedicated endpoint inside your Discourse community
  • Automatically reminds webinar registrants N minutes before the event (N is configurable in the plugin settings, by default reminders are turned off)
  • Administrators can add panelists to a webinar in Discourse
  • Administrators can add a link to video recordings of the webinar in Discourse, which is then displayed to users after the event has ended
  • Zoom event hosts and panelists are associated with Discourse user accounts

Usage

To use the Discourse Zoom plugin, you first need to install it in your Discourse instance and configure it with your Zoom Server-to-Server OAuth app credentials. Once the plugin is set up, you can create a new Zoom webinar by creating a new topic and associating it with the webinar. Users can then register for the webinar directly from the topic.

Installation

Step 1: Install the plugin in your Discourse instance

You can install the plugin to your Discourse instance by following the instructions here.

Step 2: Create a Server-to-Server OAuth app in the Zoom Marketplace


To get started, you’ll need to create a Server-to-Server OAuth app in the Zoom Marketplace. This app will be needed to make requests to the Zoom API and to receive events notifications via Webhooks


Step 3: Configure the plugin

Once the plugin is installed, go to your Discourse site settings and check the zoom enabled checkbox and save.

From the Zoom Marketplace go to the App Credentials tab:

Then copy and paste the values into the corresponding site settings on your Discourse instance:

  • zoom s2s account id
  • zoom s2s client id
  • zoom s2s client secret

Step 4: Set the webhook secret token

On the Feature tab of your Zoom Server-to-Server OAuth app, copy the “Secret Token” and add it to your Discourse site’s zoom webhooks secret token site setting.

Step 5: Enable event subscriptions

While still on the Feature tab of your Zoom Server-to-Server OAuth app, enable “Event Subscriptions” and and select the Add Event Subscription button:

Next, set the “Event notification endpoint URL” to:

https://YOURSITE.COM/zoom/webhooks/webinars.json

then select the + Add Events button:

Open the Webinar tab from the event types list and check all of the events that listed. If you can’t see the Webinar event permissions, check how to enable the permissions.

Under the “Event notification endpoint URL” your set earlier, find the Validate button:

It should show A checkmark icon with "Validated" in green if everything worked.

Finally select the Save button at the bottom of the page

Step 6: Scopes

Once you have set the event subscriptions move to the Scopes tab, and click on the Add Scopes button. Here you will select the following scopes by either searching by the values given in the tables, manually or using partial values, for example instead of searching for webinar:read:list_panelists:admin search for webinar:read: this will narrow down the elements show so it is easier to find the required ones.

In the Server to server OAuth app under the scopes tab click on the Add Scopes button and a window will show up:

In the search scope search by full or partial name, to facilitate this, you can copy-paste each of the scopes into the following tables or search for them under the corresponding tab:

Users

scope desc
user:read:user:admin View a user
user:read:email:admin Verify a user’s email
user:read:list_users:admin View users

Webinar

scope desc
webinar:read:list_panelists:admin View a webinar’s panelists
webinar:read:list_absentees:admin View a past webinar’s absentees
webinar:read:webinar:admin View a webinar
webinar:read:registrant:admin View a webinar’s registrant
webinar:read:list_registrants:admin View a webinar’s registrants
webinar:write:batch_registrants:admin Add registrants to a webinar
webinar:delete:webinar:admin Delete a webinar
webinar:write:panelist Add panelists to a webinar
webinar:delete:registrant Remove a webinar’s registrant
webinar:write:webinar Create a webinar for a user
webinar:update:status Update a webinar’s status
webinar:delete:panelist Remove a webinar’s panelist
webinar:update:webinar Update a webinar
webinar:write:registrant Add a registrant to a webinar

Webinar

scope desc
webinar:read:list_panelists:admin View a webinar’s panelists
webinar:read:list_absentees:admin View a past webinar’s absentees
webinar:read:webinar:admin View a webinar
webinar:read:registrant:admin View a webinar’s registrant
webinar:read:list_registrants:admin View a webinar’s registrants
webinar:write:batch_registrants:admin Add registrants to a webinar
webinar:delete:webinar:admin Delete a webinar
webinar:write:panelist Add panelists to a webinar
webinar:delete:registrant Remove a webinar’s registrant
webinar:write:webinar Create a webinar for a user
webinar:update:status Update a webinar’s status
webinar:delete:panelist Remove a webinar’s panelist
webinar:update:webinar Update a webinar
webinar:write:registrant Add a registrant to a webinar

Step 7: Create a Meeting SDK App

:warning: Zoom has changed things on their side, we are working on getting the guide updated.


The SDK meeting app authenticates the user so the user can join the webinar meeting


Start by creating a General App, and under the Select how the app is managed, select User-managed.

Under the Basic Information tab in your General App, copy and paste the Client ID/ SDK key into the zoom sdk key field, and the Client Secret/SDK secret into the zoom sdk secret field.

Scrolling down, you will find the OAuth Information section, in the OAuth Redirect URL place the URL of your site, for example, https://YOURSITE.com.

Step 8: Specify your app usage

Under the Features tab select the Embed sub-tab, enable the Meeting SDK

Limitations

The plugin only works with webinars that do not require registration in Zoom.

Notice about breaking Changes

Due to deprecations in the Zoom API, old instances of the plugin will need to be configured following the steps mentioned in this post.

:discourse2: Hosted by us? This plugin is available on our Enterprise plans.

Last edited by @nat 2024-10-03T13:27:22Z

Check documentPerform check on document:
63 curtidas

Thanks so much for working on this, great feature!

I was able to install the plugin, create the JWT app in Zoom, and configure my discourse as described.
However, I am running into problems when using the Zoom Webinar button in the composer to associate a scheduled meeting with the post.

It would be great if you could please add an explanation what exactly one has to enter in the text input under “Add Webinar” . Neither the meeting ID or full URL seem to work for me.

Another minor issue I noticed: The repository URL linked to in the “Plugins” page of the admin dashboard points to https://github.com/discourse-org/discourse-zoom, whereas it should be linking to GitHub - discourse/discourse-zoom: Integrate Zoom events in Discourse.

2 curtidas

Interesting concept, and looks like a nice experience for community members!

I’m curious if there’s been any thought yet to allowing a more generic (vendor-agnostic) workflow with this plugin; basically to offer the same embedding of a countdown timer to a specific time and date, specifying a host and/or panelist, link to the webinar URL, later links to recordings, etc.

Jiti (open source) would be the example that I had in mind but there are obviously several options in this space.

2 curtidas

You need to enter the webinar ID. In your site’s logs in /logs, you should be able to see more details if it still can’t add the event in the modal window. I also fixed the URL issue you mentioned, thanks for reporting that.

Unfortunately, no, this currently does not provide a vendor-agnostic workflow. The Zoom API calls are abstracted though, so it’s possible to add support for another vendor with a bit of effort (although, the plugin would need to be renamed to something less zoom-y).

8 curtidas

Is there any possibility of adding meeting support w/out registration to this plugin as well as webinars? Great work!

7 curtidas

Now that Zoom requires a password for all meetings/webinars I think the plugin is broken. I tried creating a webinar and when I join it gives this error Your connection has timed out and you cannot join the meeting. Verify your network connectivity and try again.

3 curtidas

I will look into this today. It’s possible this is a temporary issue, the web client for Zoom is marked as “under maintenance” on their Status page at status.zoom.us.

5 curtidas

I just want to mention that use of webinars is $40.00 a month minimum to enable + $14.99 a month Pro plan. Cheers.

2 curtidas

Yes, unfortunately it looks like Zoom’s Web SDK is offline for now. They say they are working on bringing it back online (not quite sure what that means).

For the moment, then, I have added a workaround to the plugin, when joining a webinar, it will now show this screen when joining via SDK fails:

8 curtidas

FYI, a cooperative I co-founded went for https://bigbluebutton.org/. Self-hosting cost us a lot less than a Zoom webinar account.

11 curtidas

Hi Penar, I just noticed there is a Webinar tab in the users profile, as an admin I can view this as expected, but as a regular user I get this error

Access Denied

while trying to load [/topics/webinar-registrations/chris_murray.json](https://community.naturephotographers.network/topics/webinar-registrations/chris_murray.json)

From the logs:

Error: Forbidden
Url: https://community.naturephotographers.network/assets/ember_jquery-57d09ec67e9e407d9b0d42aa1fefd1a470c45310d953b07793a3ca8adc6ec599.js
Line: 1
Column: 267206
Window Location: https://community.naturephotographers.network/u/chris_murray/activity


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1 curtida

I can’t reproduce this, tested on multiple sites with different usernames, including locally with a username containing an underscore.

Yes, the plugin uses Zoom’s WebSDK, and it has issues in some browsers.

1 curtida

FYI I just did a webinar using this and the Join button didn’t work at all, everyone got a timeout from Zoom, but I directed everyone to the regular zoom link which worked fine. So it seems the WebSDK is having lots of problems. Maybe we could have an option to put in the url for the join button rather than relying on the websdk since it is failing?

1 curtida

The Zoom SDK should work if you deploy, I updated the plugin last week. They did block all previous versions though so if you haven’t deployed recently that could explain it. And adding the zoom link as an option makes sense.

2 curtidas

Thanks Penar, I didn’t realize there was an update, hopefully that will fix it for next time.

Question about the video you can add afterwards; does this only work for Zoom cloud recordings? If I use Vimeo or Youtube it says it’s not a supported format. Just curious, not a big deal since I can just include it in the post.

1 curtida

Oh yes, that fields only works with a URL to a direct video file. Youtube or Vimeo won’t work, but as you say, it’s much easier to use oneboxing for Youtube/Vimeo URLs.

3 curtidas

See: BigBlueButton video conference

1 curtida

Apenas um pequeno feedback depois de usar isso algumas vezes.

  1. O botão de entrar ficar oculto até que a webinar comece não é amigável ao usuário. Recebo vários e-mails antes do início da webinar perguntando onde está o link para entrar, mesmo tendo explicado isso na descrição da webinar e na notificação de que ele aparecerá quando a webinar começar. As pessoas simplesmente não leem. Pessoalmente, eu preferiria ter o botão de entrar sempre visível; se clicarem nele antes, apenas receberão a informação de que a webinar ainda não começou e poderão verificar novamente o horário real de início.

  2. Seria possível dar suporte a sessões de ensaio? Com uma webinar, há a opção de isso: o host e os painelistas podem conversar entre si antes, sem estar ao vivo para os participantes. Eles podem clicar no link da reunião do Zoom durante esse período e receberão uma notificação informando que a reunião ainda não começou, mas estarão em uma espécie de sala de espera, e a entrada será automática assim que iniciarmos a transmissão ao vivo. Isso resolveria muitos problemas para os usuários.

3 curtidas

Peço desculpas pelo atraso, David.

Existe uma configuração que provavelmente pode ajudar você nisso:

Se você definir isso para 30, o botão aparecerá 30 minutos antes do horário agendado do webinar.

Você deve ser capaz de usar isso com a configuração acima também. Na última vez que verifiquei, os webhooks do Zoom não são acionados quando a sessão de ensaio se transforma em um evento completo, o que torna um pouco complicado o outro aspecto dinâmico.

3 curtidas

Obrigado, Penar, mas esse não é exatamente o problema.

Primeiro, meu botão “Inscreva-se agora” não está funcionando de forma alguma:

Antes funcionava, mas isso começou nas últimas semanas. Também não vejo o link de fallback aparecendo.

Além disso, há um problema separado que mencionei antes: o problema do modo de prática. Quando eu tinha o problema mencionado anteriormente, funcionava assim: quando eu iniciava o webinar no modo de prática, o botão de entrar não aparecia, não importava como o zoom join x mins before start estivesse configurado; ele só aparecia quando eu realmente iniciava a transmissão, o que eu gosto de fazer apenas 5 minutos antes do início. Idealmente, o botão de entrar apareceria assim que a configuração fosse atingida, e os participantes receberiam a notificação do Zoom de que o webinar ainda não começou.

Você acha que poderia oferecer uma opção para simplesmente trocar o botão de registro pelo botão de entrar no horário definido, usando apenas o link do Zoom? Não um fallback, mas um link forçado para contornar isso completamente. Obrigado novamente, Penar!