🎥 Zoom, recordings & the video library

Auto-provisioned meetings and webinars, recordings that publish themselves, and who can watch them.

The agenda is the source of truth and Zoom follows it. You don't create meetings in Zoom and paste links back — you build sessions here and press a button.

🎥 Provisioning meetings and webinars

🎥 Provision Zoom sessions on the event hub queues a job for every zoom_meeting and zoom_webinar session in the event. Each gets created (or updated) in Zoom with the session's title and times, and the resulting IDs are stored against the session — which is what lights up · 🎥 provisioned in your sessions list.

Finish the agenda first — titles and times come from the sessions, so provisioning a half-built agenda means provisioning it again.
Press 🎥 Provision Zoom sessions.
Give it a moment — the work runs in a background queue, not while you wait — then reload 🗓 Sessions and look for the 🎥 provisioned markers.
Changed a session time afterwards? Press the button again. It updates existing Zoom entries rather than duplicating them, so it's safe to re-run as often as you like.

🎤 Syncing webinar panelists

🎤 Sync webinar panelists registers each session's assigned speakers as panelists on its Zoom webinar. Zoom then emails every panelist their own unique join link — that email comes from Zoom, not from this platform, and it's the only way a speaker gets camera, mic and screen-share rights.

⚠️ Heads up

This is the single most common day-of failure. Sync panelists days before, not minutes before, and ask each speaker to confirm they received the Zoom email. Check the email address on each speaker's record is the one they actually read — Zoom sends to that address and nowhere else.

The sync skips speakers already added, so re-running it after adding a late speaker is safe. It only applies to zoom_webinar sessions; plain meetings have no panelist concept, so brief those speakers to join early and be promoted by the host.

💡 Tip

Point speakers at 🖥️ Your sessions & presenting online — it explains the panelist email, the semi-live format and the Q&A from their side, and saves you writing it out.

📼 Recordings publish themselves

When a Zoom cloud recording finishes processing, the platform pulls it down, stores it, and attaches it to the session. No manual upload, no link copying. Once it lands:

The session page gains a teal ▶ Watch recording button.
The session appears in the event's 🎥 Videos library with its speakers credited.
An AI recap is drafted automatically and shown on the session page in a Recap box — unless the session already has one.

ℹ️ Note

Processing is Zoom's, not ours, so a recording takes a while after the session ends — often much longer for a long session. If a recording hasn't appeared, check it finished processing in Zoom before assuming something broke.

🎬 Semi-live playback

An on_demand_video session with a scheduled time premieres "as live": attendees get a countdown card before, synchronised playback during (skipping ahead snaps back), and normal on-demand playback after it ends.

It's the best of both worlds for a distributed audience — a polished recording plus a real conversation, because the speaker is free to work the Q&A while their video plays. Set the session type to on_demand_video, put the video URL in External / video URL, and give it real start and end times.

Video source	Behavior
A direct video file	Full sync enforcement — seeking is guarded so everyone stays at the same moment.
YouTube or Vimeo	Embedded and started at the correct offset, so people joining land in sync — but those platforms don't allow continuous enforcement, so a determined viewer can scrub.

💡 Tip

Use a direct file for anything where the sync genuinely matters (a prize reveal, an embargoed announcement). Use YouTube when convenience matters more.

🎟 Who can watch

Playback and join links are restricted. Access means:

a non-revoked ticket for the event — bought, or a group seat they claimed; or
an organizer, speaker or moderator role on the event; or
a platform admin.

Everyone else sees a card explaining the video is for ticket holders, with links to sign in or buy. Titles, abstracts, times and speaker bios stay public throughout.

🔧 When something isn't working

⚠️ Heads up

Session shows no 🎥 provisioned marker. Check the type is actually zoom_meeting or zoom_webinar — the other types are never provisioned — then press the button again and give the queue a minute.

A speaker has no panelist link. Verify the session is a zoom_webinar, that the speaker is assigned to it, and that their email address is right. Then re-run 🎤 Sync webinar panelists and have them check their spam folder.

Recording never appeared. Confirm cloud recording was actually on for the meeting and that Zoom has finished processing it. A local recording on the host's laptop can't be collected — it has to be a cloud recording.

A ticket holder can't watch. Almost always the wrong account — they're signed in with a different email from the purchase, or they were given a group seat and never claimed it. Check their ticket isn't revoked from a refund.