Zoom Video is a powerful app offering “Cloud Conferencing” technology with a lot of cool and useful features. As someone developing an online course of study, their Webinar and Meeting functionality are especially attractive. Meetings are the right fit for the course website I built.
Zoom has paywall integration for Webinars built in, but not for Meetings at the free level (which is where we’re starting). A pre-sales chat on their website revealed they support integration with Calendly for booking – and Calendly supports paywalls through either (or both) PayPal and Stripe.
Given that both Calendly and Zoom integrate with a calendar (I chose Google Calendars), it was hard to figure out where to start and how to make the connections. It ended up costing a few days of trial and error, but we got there OK thanks to a combination of Calendly support (thank you, Evan Womack), and tsuris. (Zoom has yet to reply to my support emails).
Here’s what I learned.
When the Integration is Working
Meetings originate as Event Types on Calendly, are booked through Calendly’s interface, and go automatically to the calendar and to Zoom’s Meetings list.
Upon booking and paying the bill, the buyer receives an email response with their Zoom meeting login instructions.
That’s it. It’s that simple when it’s working.
Here’s Calendly’s blog post with a little overview video
Don’t create them on Zoom (although I did that anyway at first. I found that Zoom’s schedule editor had more options, say to make something recur every 3 weeks, that Calendly is lacking. Calendly required paging through a calendar by-month view and picking dates to do that).
If you did create them on Zoom or your connected calendar first – Calendly will see them as unavailable slots and won’t be able to book there, nor show the dates as available in its booking interface. If you do try starting on your calendar, delete them. Let your customer add the date to your calendar – that’s really what’s happening.
- Another option for date pattern creation outside of Calendly (it’s easier to read from a list than page through months when adding dates) is create a blank calendar on Google Calendars, create your date schedule, show it in Schedule view, and print it.
When somebody books your meeting or class, it will appear in “Scheduled Events” on Calendly, “Meetings” in Zoom, and your connected Calendar. Remember – they appear only after somebody books one through Calendly’s booking function.
Steps to set up the Calendly to Zoom Integration
Create accounts on Zoom and Calendly. Fill out your profiles. Connect Calendly (only) to your designated calendar (Google Calendars, Outlook, etc). Never mind connecting Zoom to a calendar if you’re using Calendly, even though Zoom might suggest it otherwise for their Meetings functionality.
Set up Zoom
Watch some tutorials and take a couple of support Webinars on Zoom… there’s a lot to it, a lot of options.
Go to the Zoom App Marketplace, and add and approve Calendly. (Note that this necessary step is only apparent from reading the Zoom blog post on the integration).
Set Up Calendly
Integrations
First: go to Calendly Site>Top menu>Integrations and add Zoom. (and PayPal or Stripe).
Create “Event Types” in Calendly.
First: “What event is this”
Set the title, description for your purpose –
A bit of a description and a link back to the relevant page on your site are very good for SEO and usability.
and – Important… set the meeting Location to Zoom.
Second: Set up “When can people book this” for the event.
- Set the meeting duration.
- Set the Date Range
“Rolling” restricts availability to the chosen Date Range (it doesn’t set recurring events).
- Set Availability
- Navigate the calendar to your desired date (start date for recurring).
- Click in the Date to open the Edit Availability dialog
- Custom recurrence durations need to be entered Edit Availability> or apply to multiple>[specific dates] OR [repeating days of the week]
The next 4 tabs are optional. Take a look and see if you want to change anything.
- Add a Paywall if desired
that’s on the bottom tab.
That should do it.
Meeting details (including Zoom login info) are emailed on completion of payment.
At first, you won’t see any scheduled events anywhere. Book one for yourself to test it, and you’ll see it in 3 places:
- Calendly>My Calendly>Scheduled Events
- Your connected calendar
- Your Zoom (website) dashboard>Meetings>Upcoming Meetings