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

    • Passing the CRM

      Hi, I am hoping someone can help. I have a zoho form that has a CRM lookup field. I was hoping to send this to my publicly to clients via a text message and the form then attaches the signed form back to the custom module. This work absolutely fine when

    • Is there a way to associate an email in ZOHO Main to a Vendor record in ZOHO CRM

      My situation is as below, I have a vendor in ZOHO CRM lets say "Vend A" and an associated contact, "Cont A" If Cont A sends me an email using the email I've registered in the contact record the standard OOTB email sync will work. But the vendor has some

    • Bank charges are applied. Please select a bank account.

      Hello, I'm trying to add bank charges to a customer payment, but I get the error message "Bank charges are applied. Please select a bank account." I found this old thread, where it says that I need to "select a Bank account for the 'Deposit To' dropdown

    • Kaizen #207 - Answering your Questions | Advanced Queries using COQL API

      Hi everyone, and welcome to another Kaizen week! As part of Kaizen #200 milestone, many of you shared topics you would like us to cover, and we have been addressing them one by one over the past few weeks. Today, we are picking up one of those requests

    • Présentation de SecureForms dans Zoho Vault

      Soyons francs : demander à quelqu’un de transmettre un mot de passe ou des informations sensibles n’est jamais une tâche facile. On attend, on relance, parfois de nombreuses fois. Et quand l’information arrive, elle se retrouve souvent dispersée dans

    • Introducing Connected Records to bring business context to every aspect of your work in Zoho CRM for Everyone

      Hello Everyone, We are excited to unveil phase one of a powerful enhancement to CRM for Everyone - Connected Records, available only in CRM's Nextgen UI. With CRM for Everyone, businesses can onboard all customer-facing teams onto the CRM platform to

    • 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,

    • Sales order & purchase order item links for item details

      This is fantastic for checking lots of things, I use it a lot. It would be great to see it extended to invoices & bills On another note, may as well throw in my favourite whinge ..... Wish you guys would get the PO receive differences sorted urgently,

    • Custom Fonts in Zoho CRM Template Builder

      Hi, I am currently creating a new template for our quotes using the Zoho CRM template builder. However, I noticed that there is no option to add custom fonts to the template builder. It would greatly enhance the flexibility and branding capabilities if

    • Zoho Workdrive - Communication / Chat Bar

      Hi Team, Please consider adding an option to allow admins to turn on or off the Zoho Communication Bar. Example of what I mean by Communication Bar: It's such a pain sometimes when I'm in WorkDrive and I want to share a link to a file with a colleague

    • Introducing Profile Summary: Faster Candidate Insights with Zia

      We’re excited to launch Profile Summary, a powerful new feature in Zoho Recruit that transforms how you review candidate profiles. What used to take minutes of resume scanning can now be assessed in seconds—thanks to Zia. A Quick Example Say you’re hiring

    • Kaizen #190 - Queries in Custom Related Lists

      Hello everyone! Welcome back to another week of Kaizen! This week, we will discuss yet another interesting enhancement to Queries. As you all know, Queries allow you to dynamically retrieve data from CRM as well as third-party services directly within

    • Need the ability to have read only fields on a form.

      There needs to be functionality in Creator that allows a field on a form to be read only. Most screen building software applications have this capability. I know you can hide certain fields from specific users and that you can also make the whole form read only but that's not the functionality I need. I want to be able to create a form where certain fields are editable and other are for display purposes only (read only). For example if the form was displaying information on an item that the user

    • Reverse payment on accidentally closed invoice.

      An invoice was closed accidentally with the full payment added. However, only partial payment was paid. How can I reopen the invoice and reverse this to update it to show partial payment?

    • New integration: Track booking page appointments in Google Analytics 4

      Hello all, Greetings from the Zoho Bookings team! We’re excited to introduce our new Google Analytics 4 (GA4) integration designed to help you track booking activity, understand customer behavior, and measure marketing performance, all in one place. What

    • How to list emails in a folder, e.g. Inbox, on multiple pages when using Zoho mail webpage?

      Something as shown in the figure. There are totally 50 emails in Sent folder. If "Mail per page" equals 20, then the Sent folder is split into 3 pages. When I wander through Sent folder, I can just select a specific page to jump to. BTW, it seems that

    • How to add image to items list in Invoice or Estimate?

      Hello! I have just started using Zoho Invoice to create estimates and, possibly to switch from our current CRM/ERP Vendor to Zoho. I have a small company that is installing CCTV systems and Alarm systems. My question is, can I add images of my "items" to item list in Zoho Invoice and Estimates and their description? I would like to show my clients the image of items in our estimates so they can decide if they like these items. And I tell you, often they choose more expensive products just because

    • Zoho Calendar soft bounce on @hotmail.com and @yahoo.com email addresses

      Hello, our Zoho calendar recently does not send the calendar invites to emails with hotmail and yahoo domains and comes back with a "soft bounce". other domains like Gmail works fine. Also sending "email" to the same emails to the above domains work well

    • How can I filter a field integration?

      Hi,  I have a field integration from CRM "Products" in a form, and I have three product Categories in CRM. I only need to see Products of a category. Thanks for you answers.

    • ERROR CODE :512 - 5.4.4 DNS error:NXDOMAIN.

      Suddenly we cant send mail, we are getting this error for all outbound mail to multiple domains.

    • Can Zoho Flows repeat Actions more than once?

      I'm attempting to make an intentional Zoho Flow loop using the below layout. However, when "WithinLimit" condition is met, the program fails to execute the action "Get & Add Request Co..." again. Is this by design? Is Zoho Flows unable to repeat actions

    • Unveiling Cadences: Redefining CRM interactions with automated sequential follow-ups

      Last modified on 01/04/2024: Cadences is now available for all Zoho CRM users in all data centres (DCs). Note that it was previously an early access feature, available only upon request, and was also known as Cadences Studio. As of April 1, 2024, it's

    • customer data security

      We are exploring ways to enhance our within Zoho CRM. Our Goal: We want to fully integrate RingCentral with Zoho CRM to enable click-to-call functionality for our sales team. However, to comply with data privacy regulations and protect customer contact

    • Zoho Cliq not working on airplanes

      Hi, My team and I have been having this constant issue of cliq not working when connected to an airplane's wifi. Is there a reason for this? We have tried on different Airlines and it doesn't work on any of them. We need assistance here since we are constantly

    • Sync CRM inventory data with Zoho Books

      I just switched everything over to ZoHo books, but I am trying to find out why the CRM Estimates, Invoices, and Sales Orders created in ZoHo CRM are not then duplicated in ZoHo Books? I had Quickbooks before, and had to do everything twice, I thought

    • mask Customer phone number and agents cant see customer phone number

      Is there any way we can integrate Zoom Phone with Zoho CRM while ensuring that customer phone numbers remain masked? We need a solution where agents can make outbound calls but cannot see customer phone numbers. Please let us know if there is any solution

    • Email Reminders on Shared Calendars

      How do we turn off the setting that emails reminders to everyone who has accepted or declined a calendar invite? If 8 of us have been invited to the same meeting, we receive 8 notifications for every step of the process, from invitation to decision.

    • Default Sorting on Related Lists

      Is it possible to set the default sorting options on the related lists. For example on the Contact Details view I have related lists for activities, emails, products cases, notes etc... currently: Activities 'created date' newest first Emails - 'created

    • One Contact with Multiple Accounts with Portal enabled

      I have a contact that manages different accounts, so he needs to see the invoices of all the companies he manage in Portal but I found it not possible.. any idea? I tried to set different customers with the same email contact with the portal enabled and

    • WebDAV / FTP / SFTP protocols for syncing

      I believe the Zoho for Desktop app is built using a proprietary protocol. For the growing number of people using services such as odrive to sync multiple accounts from various providers (Google, Dropbox, Box, OneDrive, etc.) it would be really helpful if you implemented standard protocols such as WebDAV / FTP / SFTP so that alternative inc clients can be used.

    • What's New in Zoho Inventory | Q2 2025

      Hello Customers, The second quarter have been exciting months for Zoho Inventory! We’ve introduced impactful new features and enhancements to help you manage inventory operations with even greater precision and control. While we have many more exciting

    • How to refresh a ticket view ?

      I am doing a widget where I send a rest api call to make a new draft to the ticket I am viewing. The issue is sometimes it refresh a ticket view and I can see inserted draft right away, but sometimes I do not see it even if it is inserted correctly and

    • Ugh! - Text Box (Single Line) Not Enough - Text Box (Multi-line) Unavailable in PDF!

      I provide services, I do not sell items. In each estimate I send I provide a customized job description. A two or three sentence summary of the job to be performed. I need to be able to include this job description on each estimate I send as it's a critical

    • Merge Items

      Is there a work around for merging items? We currently have three names for one item, all have had a transaction associated so there is no deleting (just deactivating, which doesn't really help. It still appears so people are continuing to use it). I also can't assign inventory tracking to items used in past transactions, which I don't understand, this is an important feature moving forward.. It would be nice to merge into one item and be able to track inventory. Let me know if this is possible.

    • Supervisor Rules - Zoho Desk

      Hi, I have set up a Supervisor Rule in Zoho Desk to send an email alert when a ticket has been on hold for 48 hours. Is there a way to change it so that the alert only sends once and not on an hourly basis? Thank you Laura

    • ResponseCode 421, 4.7.0 [TSS04] Messages from 136.143.188.51 temporarily deferred due to user complaints

      Had email bounce. Let me know if you can fix this. Thanks. Michael

    • Zoho Canvas - Custom templates for related lists

      Hi, I see that the example pages load always one of our related lists in a custom template, but I dont know how to work with that:  1) How can i make my own custom templates for related lists?  2) Where and how can i check out existing custom templates?

    • Automation #15: Automatically Adding Static Secondary Contacts

      Rockel is a top-tier client of Zylker traders. Marcus handles communications with Rockel and would like to add Terence, the CTO of Zylker traders to the email conversations. In this case, the emails coming from user address rockel.com should have Terence

    • New Zoho triggers Google Dangerous flag due toabnormal charcters

      Just signed up and doing my first email test. I sent it to my google email account but it got flagged as Dangerous" due abnormal characters. My DNS setup looks ok. Page snips attached Help Please Thanks, Rick DC PowerWorld

    • Is there a API to fetch tasks in a Board/Section

      I am writing a scheduled function that retrieves all the tasks and send an reminder on cliq. I cannot seem to find a API to fetch tasks (by user / board / section) What are the way to fetch tasks?

    • Next Page