What's New—February 2022

Hello Backstage users,

We're always working to improve the Backstage experience for you. This time, we've rolled out some features and updates to make your event planning a little more effortless.

Here's everything that's happened this month in a nutshell.

Integrate with Zoom Meetings to conduct sessions

We've added another webcasting service option for you to stream your event online. Now you can integrate with the Zoom Meetings to host your sessions online. The difference between the Zoom Webinar integration, which is already available in Backstage, and the Zoom Meetings integration is the way you can interact with attendees during sessions. Zoom Webinar provides the host and speaker with control over their audio and video as well as the audience's audio. This could be useful when you want to conduct a session for a larger audience where there would be less interaction between the speaker, hosts, and audience. Although Zoom Webinar does have options for the audience to communicate with the speaker or hosts, such as Q&A and chat, there will typically be only one or two primary people who will be speaking.

With the Zoom Meetings integration, you can increase audience interaction as every participant will have control over their audio and video, allowing them to be able to see who else is in the session. When you want to conduct a session where there needs to be more collaboration between the participants, you can use this integration.

Before you begin, ensure that you have configured Zoom in your Backstage portal or select the Zoom option in the Webcast service section of the Event details tab. Then you can click the Webinar settings link and select the Zoom Meetings radio button under the Zoom engagement type section. If you are changing the webcasting service for an older event, you may have to click the Reconnect link in this section to re-establish the connection between Backstage and your Zoom account.

When using Zoom Meetings along with Backstage, you can seamlessly plan and conduct your sessions. You can also create polls for your session, which will automatically be populated in Zoom, and can rehearse sessions before the event. During your session, you can share your screen to allow participants to view any material as the session is being conducted. Apart from polls, the option for chat is also available for everyone. After the session, the poll results can be viewed on both Zoom and Backstage. Screen recordings can be captured as well and accessed later in your Zoom account. Along with this, Backstage allows you to see post-session analytics from the Summary tab inside the Sessions tab, which can help you gauge how your session went.

OTHER UPDATES

You can now set a logo, background, and ambience for sessions, networking tables, and exhibitor meeting rooms in the Virtual Space.
The number of ongoing meetings and visitors in the waiting room of an exhibitor booth can be viewed in the Exhibitors tab in the Virtual Space.
Chats in exhibitor meetings rooms can be downloaded by exhibitors from the microsite.
You can view analytics details for an exhibitor's booth. To do this, click the Exhibitors tile from the Overview tab in the Manage Dashboard.
Attendees who are imported into Backstage can also receive a PDF copy of their badge if you've designed badges for your event. Enable the Attach badge PDF option in the Welcome attendee email under the Emails tab to send it.
The A4 page size can now be selected to print badges.
You can now set the Hero section to fill the browser screen for your event microsite.
In addition to image and video support for the media element, a user can now embed iframe code from any source when designing the event microsite.
You can also now use an iframe embed code to stream the audio and video for your event when using the Backstage OnAir webcasting service. When selecting this option, some features may be limited.

To get more information on the latest features, visit our help center. If you have any questions, drop us a line here or at support@zohobackstage.com.

Happy organizing!