Announcing Backstage OnAir, our in-house virtual events solution

Announcing Backstage OnAir, our in-house virtual events solution

These past months have seen a huge rise in the number of virtual events with some of the biggest events of the year going online. Though there's little possibility for virtual events to completely replace in-person ones, COVID-19 has shown how flexible and feasible they can be. Considering all of this, it's likely organizations will continue hosting online events in the future if only for the sheer convenience of it.
 
At Backstage, we started work on our own virtual events solution back in March. Since then, we've steadily added on to our existing features so you can leverage virtual events as soon as possible. However, our ultimate goal has always been to build a virtual events solution that is just as intuitive and seamless as Backstage is for live events. Today, after a little more than four months, we're ready to introduce Backstage OnAir, our virtual events extension.



From webcasting sessions and engaging with attendees in real-time to getting detailed post-session analytics, Backstage OnAir's features will help you host virtual events that are just as good as in-person ones. The best part—you can host both your online and live events from a single platform. Convenient, right?
 
Here's a quick rundown of how the many features of Backstage OnAir—combined with tools Backstage already possesses—can benefit you before, during, and even after your online event.
 

Before the event 

Creating an online event on Backstage is pretty similar to creating a live event. Begin with the usual stuff—create your online event just as you would an in-person one or convert one of your existing events from in-person to virtual.
 
Then add event details like the agenda and speakers, onboard your team, and set up event registration. The next step is designing your event microsite. Here, you can use Backstage's 10 themes and various custom pages and sections to build an event microsite that's spot-on with your brand.
 

 
Other things you can do at this stage include promoting your event with promotional codes, affiliates, and social sharing, as well as sending emails to attendees and prospects to keep them updated with the latest event news.
 

During the event 

The difference between virtual and in-person events is mostly seen on the event day—from attendee check-in to session presentation, everything has to be done through online means, and this can lead to a lot of challenges. At Backstage, we've made all the options flexible so you have more choice and control over how things proceed.

Attendee check-in


 
Checking in to an online event is the attendee's responsibility in Backstage. On the event day, a banner will run on the event microsite to inform attendees about the status of the event—whether it has begun or not and if sessions are running. It will also prompt them to check in to the event. Once they've checked in, they can participate in the sessions, network with other attendees, and contribute to discussions. 

Session presentation


The next step is presenting your sessions remotely. We've got three options for broadcasting your sessions, and you can use any of them—Backstage OnAir, Zoho Meeting, and other third-party web-conferencing software.


 
The actual session experience depends largely on the tool you're using and the features it has to offer. We, of course, recommend Backstage OnAir for this. It comes with options like webcasting live sessions, detailed session analytics, and virtual engagement tools (polls, chat, whiteboard, and questions) to interact with attendees in real-time and make them feel like they're a part of the event. Currently, you can webcast your session to a maximum of 200 attendees though in the future, we will be increasing this number to accommodate more attendees. In addition, after each session ends, attendees can join the next session automatically. 
 

Networking


Most event organizers find networking to be a real challenge with virtual events. At Backstage, we've got a pretty handy feature to help you with this—discussion channels. You can create both public and private channels to help attendees network with others who share the same interests or even continue their discussions with speakers after the session is over.


 
You can also announce impromptu discussions or meets so everyone knows what's happening and they don't miss out on the opportunity to interact with others.
 

After the event

 

 
Once your event is over, you can post behind-the-scenes photos in the event gallery and give your attendees a peek into what really went on backstage. You can also ask your attendees to post photos. The gallery is a good place to bond with them over photos and memories. This is especially important with virtual events as a lot of things here happen over text and voice. Pictures can help make the experience more authentic, real, and personal.


 
The other important thing to do after the event is study the analytics so you know what went right and what went wrong. Backstage already offers two equally important types of analytics—sales analytics and session analytics—and the great thing about the OnAir extension is that your virtual event can still leverage all the Backstage features you normally use for in-person events. While the former tells you how interested people were in your event, the latter tells you how satisfying the experience was. You can also make use of our PageSense integration to step this up a little and get detailed website analytics.
 
Also, members subscribed to our Enterprise and Ultimate plans can use Backstage OnAir free of charge to present remote sessions and host virtual events until September 30, 2020.
 
Power your virtual events with Backstage OnAir and give your attendees an experience they won't forget any time soon! Let us know what you think in the comments below. For product-related questions or suggestions, write to us at support@zohobackstage.com.

Happy organizing!


    • Sticky Posts

    • Important notice: Changes in sender domains

      Hello Backstage users, This is a heads-up about a major change with sender domains in Zoho Backstage. In response to Google's new guidelines for email senders, Backstage won't be able to send emails with the sender domain "gmail.com" or "googlemail.com".

    • Announcing Backstage OnAir, our in-house virtual events solution

      These past months have seen a huge rise in the number of virtual events with some of the biggest events of the year going online. Though there's little possibility for virtual events to completely replace in-person ones, COVID-19 has shown how flexible

    • Introducing the mobile app for event organizers

      It doesn't matter if you're planning your first trade show or an annual executive retreat—organizing an event requires your undivided attention. This is especially true on event day, when things can quickly get out of hand. So how can you stay on top of everything happening at your event? Introducing the Zoho Backstage for Event Organizers mobile app, for Android and iOS—designed to improve and simplify your event management. Getting things started on time, checking in attendees on event day, following

    • Announcing Zoho Backstage: Your complete event management software

      With just a few months till the event, you're still racking your brain. Did you advertise to the right audience? Is your event website design appealing? How will you keep attendees engaged and interested during sessions? It doesn't matter if you're organizing

    • Recent Topics

    • Cant Save Gauge on Creator Page

      How to Save Gauge on Creator Page see movie https://vimeo.com/1116410860?share=copy#t=0

    • Update application by uploading an updated DS file

      Is it possible? I have been working with AI on my desktop improving my application, and I have to keep copy pasting stuff... Would it be possible to import the DS file on top of an existing application to update the app accordingly?

    • Granular Email Forwarding Controls in Zoho Mail (Admin Console and Zoho One)

      Hello Zoho Mail Team, How are you? At present, the Zoho Mail Admin Console allows administrators to configure email forwarding for an entire mailbox, forwarding all incoming emails to another address. This is helpful for delegation or backup purposes,

    • Change Currency symbol

      I would like to change the way our currency displays when printed on quotes, invoices and purchase orders. Currently, we have Australian Dollars AUD as our Home Currency. The only two symbol choices available for this currency are "AU $" or "AUD". I would

    • Auto Capitalize First Letter of Words

      Hi I am completely new to ZOHO and am trying to build a database. How can i make it when a address is entered into a form field like this: main st it automatically changes is to show: Main St Thank You

    • Follow-up emails via Workflow Automation not staying in the same thread

      Dear Zoho Support Team, I am currently using Workflow Automation in Zoho Campaigns to send follow-up emails. In my test case, I noticed the following behavior: All emails in the automation have the same subject line. If the follow-up email is sent within

    • Client Script refuses to set an initial value in Subform field

      I tried a very simple, 1 line client script to set a default value in a custom subform field when the "Add Row" button is clicked and the user is entering data. It does not work - can someone tell me why? ZDK documentation suggests this should be doable.

    • Archiving Contacts

      How do I archive a list of contacts, or individual contacts?

    • How do I filter contacts by account parameters?

      Need to filter a contact view according to account parameter, eg account type. Without this filter users are overwhelmed with irrelevant contacts. Workaround is to create a custom 'Contact Type' field but this unbearable duplicity as the information already

    • Send / Send & Close keyboard shortcuts

      Hello! My team is so close to using Zoho Desk with just the keyboard. Keyboard shortcuts really help us to be more efficient -- saving a second or two over thousands of tickets adds up quickly. It seems like the keyboard shortcuts in Desk are only for

    • Zoho Social - Post Footer Templates

      As a content creator I often want to include some information at the end of most posts. It would be great if there was an option to add pre-written footers, similar to the Hashtag Groups at the end of posts. For example, if there is an offer I'm running

    • Zoho Expense - The ability to add detail to a Trip during booking

      As an admin, I would like the ability to add more detail to the approved Trips. At present a requestor can add flights, accommodation details and suggest their preferences. It would be great if the exact details of the trip could be added either by the

    • Simplified Call Logging

      Our organization would like to start logging calls in our CRM; however, with 13 fields that can't be removed, our team is finding it extremely cumbersome. For our use case, we only need to record that a call happened theirfor would only need the following

    • Week date range in pivot table

      Hello, I need to create a report that breakouts the data by week.  I am using the pivot table report, and breaking out the date by week, however the date is displayed as 'Week 1 2014' format.  Is there anyway to get the actual dates in there? ex. 1/6/2014-1/12/2014 Thanks,

    • Help Center IFrame Issue

      I have had a working Help Center on my website using an iframe for a while. But now for some reason the sign in page gets a refused to connect error. Can someone please help. If I go to the url manually it works correclty

    • Staff rules

      Hi! Do you people know what are the default staff rules when a new booking is created? We have two staff members in my team (me as the admin, and my employee). As we share the same services, I'm wondering how Zoho will pick the staff for new apointments.

    • Comment Templates

      Is it possible to add a template option for comments? We have some agents in the process who's responses require a pre-formatted layout. It would be incredibly handy to have a template for them where they can insert the template and then add their responses

    • [ZohoDesk] Improve Status View with a new editeble kanban view

      A kanban view with more information about the ticket and the contact who created the ticket would be valueble. I would like to edit the fields with the ones i like to see at one glance. Like in CRM where you can edit the canvas view, i would like to edit

    • Adding Markdown text using Zoho Desk API into the Knowledge Base

      Hi Zoho Community members, We currently maintain the documentation of out company in its website. This documentation is written in markdown text format and we would like to add it in Zoho Knowledge Base. Do you know if there is REST API functionality

    • An Exclusive Session for Zoho Desk Users: AI in Zoho Desk

      A Zoho Community Learning Initiative Hello everyone! This is an announcement for Zoho Desk users and anyone exploring Zoho Desk. With every nook and corner buzzing, "AI's here, AI's there," it's the right time for us to take a closer look at how the AI

    • Shared values: From classroom lessons to teaching moments in customer service

      While the world observes Teachers’ Day on October 5, in India, we celebrate a month earlier, on September 5, to mark the birth anniversary of Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, a great teacher, renowned scholar, educationist, and advocate for empowerment.

    • Export to excel stored amounts as text instead of numbers or accounting

      Good Afternoon, We have a quarterly billing report that we generate from our Requests. It exports to excel. However if we need to add a formula (something as simple as a sum of the column), it doesn't read the dollar amounts because the export stores

    • Image Upload Field | Zoho Canvas

      I'm working on making a custom view for one of our team's modules. It's an image upload field (Placement Photo) that would allow our sales reps to upload a picture of the house their working on. However, I don't see that field as a opinion when building

    • Create a list of customers who participated in specific Zoho Backstage events and send them an email via Zoho CRM

      How to create a list of customers who participated in specific Zoho Backstage events and send them an email via Zoho CRM? I was able to do a view in CRM based on customer that registered to an event, but I don't seems to be able to include the filter

    • Custom Button Disappearing in mobile view | Zoho CRM Canvas

      I'm working in Zoho CRM Canvas to create a custom view for our sales team. One of the features I'm adding is a custom button that opens the leads address in another tab. I've had no issue with this in the desktop view, but in the mobile view the button

    • Zoho Desk blank page

      1. Click Access zoho desk on https://www.zoho.com/desk/ 2. It redirects to https://desk.zoho.com/agent?action=CreatePortal and the page is blank. Edge browser Version 131.0.2903.112 (Official build) (arm64) on MacOS

    • Clearing Fields using MACROS?

      How would I go about clearing a follow-up field date from my deals? Currently I cannot set the new value as an empty box.

    • I hate the new user UI with the bar on the left

      How can I reverse this?

    • Constant color of a legend value

      It would be nice if we can set a constant color/pattern to a value when creating a chart. We would often use the same value in different graph options and I always have to copy the color that we've set to a certain value from a previous graph to make

    • Office 365 and CRM mail integration: permission required

      Has anyone run into this weird problem? My email server is Office 365. When I try to configure Zoho CRM to use this server, a Microsoft popup window opens requesting user and password. After entering that, I get a message in the Microsoft window saying

    • Field Not Updating in FSM Script - Service and Parts module.

      Dear Team, I am reaching out regarding a script I have implemented in Zoho FSM to automate the calculation of the End of Service date based on the End of Sale date in the Service and Parts module. Overview of the script: Fetches the End_of_Sale__C and

    • Question regarding import of previous deals...

      Good afternoon, I'm working on importing some older deal records from an external sheet into the CRM; however, when I manually click "Add New Deal" and enter the pertinent information, the deal isn't appearing when I look at the "Deals" bar on the account's

    • Client Script also planned for Zoho Desk?

      Hello there, I modified something in Zoho CRM the other day and was amazed at the possibilities offered by the "Client Script" feature in conjunction with the ZDK. You can lock any fields on the screen, edit them, you can react to various events (field

    • One person/cell phone to manage multiple accounts

      Hi. I have a personal Free account to keep my own domain/emails. Now I need to create a Business account to my company's own domain, but I have only one mobile phone number I use to everything. How do I do to manage this? Can I manage a Free domain and

    • Tracking KPIs, Goals etc in People

      How are Zoho People users tracking employee targets in People? For example, my marketing assistant has a target of "Collect 10 new customer testimonials every month". I want to record attainment for this target on a monthly basis, then add it to their

    • Zoho Desk: Ticket Owner Agents vs Teams

      Hi Zoho, We would like to explore the possibility of hiding the ‘Agents’ section within the Ticket Owner dropdown, so that we can fully utilise the ‘Teams’ dropdown when assigning tickets. This request comes from the fact that only certain agents and

    • CRM limit reached: only 2 subforms can be created

      we recently stumbled upon a limit of 2 subforms per module. while we found a workaround on this occasion, only 2 subforms can be quite limiting in an enterprise setting. @Ishwarya SG I've read about imminent increase of other components (e.

    • Can not Use Attachment Button on Android Widget

      this always pops up when I touch the attach button on android widget. going to settings, there is no storage permission to be enabled. if I open the app, and access the attach feature there, I can access my storage and upload normally.

    • Can I add Conditional merge tags on my Templates?

      Hi I was wondering if I can use Conditional Mail Merge tags inside my Email templates/Quotes etc within the CRM? In spanish and in our business we use gender and academic degree salutations , ie: Dr., Dra., Sr., Srta., so the beginning of an email / letter

    • Zoho Notebook Sync problem

      I'm facing a problem with syncing of notebook on android app. It's not syncing. Sometimes it syncs after a day or two.  I created some notes on web notebook but it's not syncing on mobile app. Please help!!!!

    • Next Page