Schedule a Webinar - Reference Guide

Created by Faye for Freshworks, Modified on Fri, 30 Jan at 11:08 AM by Faye for Freshworks

This article walks you through all the options involved in scheduling a Zoom Webinar. You will see Pro Tips from our Virtual Event Specialist (VES) team and links to Zoom's own help resources. This article explains all the key features that are generally relevant to Encore events but not every single setting as they are either not used, self-explanatory, or covered in detail in Zoom's online help.

In this article:

Meeting vs Webinar
Zoom Resources
Schedule Webinar
After a webinar is scheduled - more settings

Meeting vs Webinar

The Meeting and Webinar platforms offer similar features and functionality but have some key differences.

Meetings are designed to be a collaborative event with all participants being able to screen share, turn on their video and audio, and see who else is in attendance.

Webinars are designed so that the host and any designated panelists can share their video, audio and screen. The host can also unmute attendees. Webinars allow view-only attendees, who have the ability to interact via Q&A, Chat, and answer polling questions. Webinar attendees can't rename themselves.

In general, you cannot change webinar settings after a webinar has started. It is possible but you would have to stop the webinar, remove all the people, make the changes and have everyone log in again. This is very confusing for the users and should be avoided. It is the equivalent of making all the attendees leave the ballroom while you make some changes to the stage, then getting them to all come back in again.

Zoom Resources

Schedule Webinar

Topic

Description Not generally used

Not generally used by Encore but the description will appear on the registration page if you are using the registration option.

When

Set the start time to midnight (12:00 AM) on the day of the event.

Duration

Set the duration to 24 hours.

If you set the start time to midnight and the duration to 24 hours, if the webinar runs over time then no warnings will pop up for the participants.
Example: If you set the webinar to start at 2pm with a duration of 1 hour, close to 3pm everyone will get a warning that time is almost up. Going past 3pm will not stop the webinar.

Time Zone

For a single day

For multiple days

If this is a multi-day event, check [Recurring Webinar], set recurrence to [daily], repeat every [1] day.

Choose the end date.

This will allow you to just start the webinar each day instead of creating multiple webinars.

Registration

Zoom Help: Scheduling a webinar with registration

Only enable registration if the client asks for it. Registration can cause friction where people forget which email they registered with and try to log in with a different email.

Scheduling a webinar with registration requires your registrants to complete a brief form before receiving the link to join your webinar. This allows you to collect the names, email addresses, and other information from the registrants. You can choose to automatically approve anyone who registers or manually approve attendees.

Registration can either have automatic approval or manual approval. There is no way to let the customer do manual approval as they do not and cannot have access to the account. You would have to log in at regular intervals, download a registration report and get the customer to approve them. This is time-consuming and can be frustrating for the customer.

Adding registration close to the event is not ideal as the customer will usually have sent out the link to the meeting. Enabling registration will make the link unusable.

Authentication

We do not use authentication unless the client insists. this option requires that you have a Zoom account to access the meeting. Many people will not necessarily have a registered Zoom account and will not be able to get into the meeting. This problem gets worse if you use both registration and authentication.

You can manually promote a participant to a panelist, in fact, it is probably best that you keep as few panelists as possible, promoting them to a panelist in time for them to present but demoting them afterward when their contribution is complete.

Webinar Passcode

Always use this option.

Video

Audio

Webinar Options

Q&A - Normally Enabled
Enable Practice Session - Not normally used
Enable HD video for screen shared video - Normally Enabled
Enable HD video for attendees Learn More - Normally Enabled, 1080p to attendees
Enable Host control of panelist appearance - Not normally used
Automatically record webinar - cloud recording locked on for all Encore accounts
Approve or block entry for users from specific countries/regions - Not normally used

Compass Opp Not currently used

Scheduler Name Not generally used

Alternative Hosts Not generally used

This has to be an encoreglobal.com or psav.com email address

Interpretation

Zoom help: Using Language Interpretation in your meeting or webinar

After a webinar is scheduled

After a webinar is scheduled you can access other information and features.

Convert this webinar to a meeting

You can convert a webinar to a meeting and vice versa. If you do this make sure to adjust the settings as required.

Invitations

Invite panelists - not normally used. Panelists can join as normal attendees and you can promote them to a panelist using the in-meeting controls.

Email Settings

Branding

If you are using registration, the branding tab will allow you to control some elements of the registration page that the participants will see.

Polls

Zoom Help: Polling for webinars

Polls can only be created via a web browser and only with the account login details. They can be created during the meeting but it is safer to do it beforehand.

Account login details must not be given out to the customer.

Survey

Q&A

More

Integration

Not normally used

Live Streaming

You can stream directly from Zoom but it puts a "Powered by Zoom" logo in the corner of the screen which customers often don't like. Encore offers streaming hardware to avoid this and the stream can be delivered by Encore's content delivery network (CDN) or streamed to a third-party CDN.

More Options

Not normally used

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