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

    • Migrate emails from a shared mail box to a private mail box

      How is possible migrate a shared mail box if the migration tool require a password, and the shared mail dosent have ?

    • Support poor service

      I just wanted Zoho support to give me some more concrete answers. I’m facing SMTP error issues, and they told me that the South American IP was experiencing problems, but they didn’t provide an estimate for when it would be resolved. Now my company is

    • Zoho say my domain seems to be already associated with another account

      I created a zoho account for try my domain mail configuration. When I want to add my domain in this page https://mailadmin.zoho.com/hosting?plan=free then this shows an error that is "This domain is already associated with this account a*****n@f*****."

    • Incorrect Device Time

      Hi On my windows laptop I can't sign into Zoho mail due to "incorrect device time". I'm in Toronto, Canada. How can this be resolved?

    • Get user images by API

      Hi For our internal management software, I want to retrieve user photos via REST API: curl --location --request GET 'https://profile.zoho.com/file?fs=thumb&ID=<zoid>' \ --header 'Authorization: Zoho-oauthtoken <token>' The token has `profile.userphoto.ALL`,

    • Depois de 1 ano não consigo receber e-mail

      Consigo enviar e-mails mas não estou recebendo nenhum e-mail isso aconteceu pontualmente após eu completar 1 ano de uso. Me ajudem por favor

    • Submitted form URL

      I am using the feature "Include a link to allow respondents to edit their responses" for the first time. This URL is included in the email sent to the user after they press Submit. If a form is Saved, there is a section called Partially Saved Entries

    • Function for Emails tranfer from Lead to Deal

      Hi Due to the fact that my Deals conversion needs to be done in 2 ways - depending on the fact if those records already exists or not - resources in fields are different. I am making function control conversation for Leads but I have problem with transferring

    • Create a new immigration service- Similar to immigration law software

      It will be good if you can build a new service. Data will be pulled from the employee form. Then automatically users should be able to complete immigration forms like I 129, ETA 9089, ETA 9035 E, G- 28, W4, I 9 PDF forms and then be able to send for signature with Zoho sign. Immigration Softwares like docketwise can be used for ideas. The advantage with this it sits within Zoho people and employees don't have to feed data in another system

    • Accessibility in Zoho CRM: Not just a feature—a way to empower

      For instructions on setting up these controls, please check this help document: Configuring accessibility controls. Hello everyone, Today (December 3, 2024), on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, we begin our journey towards a CRM that

    • Zoho Meeting very bad video quality

      Hello, I need 1080p HD on my Zoho Meeting as explained here: Low Resolution/Quality Video (zoho.com) Currently, video quality is lagging with 400mb internet which is not acceptable for my business. My 1080p 60FPS webcam performs well on platforms like

    • Contacts with Deals not appearing.

      What: I simply want to see all of the contacts that are tied to an open deal Problem: In Contacts Module > When filtering on Contacts with an open deal, Zoho only shows some Contacts instead of all. Details: More specifically, I should have ~200 contacts

    • Auto-sync field of lookup value

      This feature has been requested many times in the discussion Field of Lookup Announcement and this post aims to track it separately. At the moment the value of a 'field of lookup' is a snapshot but once the parent lookup field is updated the values diverge.

    • 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.

    • Version of Cliq included with Zoho One and Limitations

      I'm confused by the information presented in the application detail page of Zoho One. I'm a solopreneur with a single-seat Zoho One Enterprise license and I need to communicate externally .. extensively. The plan details page suggests channels are limited to 100 members. Whereas the pricing plan comparison page on the Cliq marketing site says 2500 for enterprise level.  If it's 100... that's going to kill my use case as it is my understanding that external customers can only be communicated with

    • Resubmit for Approval for Zoho Books Module in CRM

      The integration between CRM and Books is great, but it is incomplete in many areas. One of them is if an estimate/invoice/sales order is rejected, the users in CRM cannot resubmit it for approval. Let's face it, sales people will mostly be in CRM and

    • Upload edited meeting recording for attendees to download

      Hi Would it be possible to let meeting organisers upload an edited version of the meeting recording? Usage case: most of us probably start a meeting 15 minutes before the official start time. It would be nice to trim that dead time off the recording.

    • Why does the embed feature within the article editor seem to be not functional?

      I would like to embed media into an article, but that feature seems to be non-functioning. Am I doing something wrong? to clarify, I do not want to create an article by embedding. I want to embed media into an article I have created in a manual.

    • Get all fields using COQL

      Hi Is it possible to get all the fields of a record using COQL?. Something similar to select * from Accounts in SQL.

    • Mapping a new Ticket in Zoho Desk to an Account or Deal in Zoho CRM manually

      Is there any way for me to map an existing ticket in Zoho desk to an account or Deal within Zoho CRM? Sometimes people use different email to put in a ticket than the one that we have in the CRM, but it's still the same person. We would like to be able

    • Inquiry Regarding Image Display Issue in Campaign Duplication

      We are currently using Zoho Campaigns for email distribution to our clients. I would like to inquire about an issue we encountered. When duplicating a previously created and sent campaign from the "All Campaigns" section, the images used in the header

    • Can it change the language ?

      Hello ! The question is in the title ;) 

    • Notes and Notebook integration

      Maybe I missed it, but is there a way to synch notes in the desktop with the notes in the Notebook app? I've been combing through the help topics and other forum entries and not finding anything. When I downloaded the android app I assumed there was integration with the desktop notes. Is that not the case? thanks.

    • Tags on notes aren't syncing correctly on Android

      I've created notes on the desktop version that have several tags assigned, but on both my Android devices those notes only have ONE of those tags instead of all of them, despite the actual content of the note being correctly synced, and I'm also starting

    • Text formatting does not work (Notebook Mac)

      The text formatting does not work at all. It seems, that the program loses the selection and therefore hitting bold, italic, etc. does not do anything.

    • For Each Loop only returns 1st result of List, not the whole list?

      I have a custom function that collects event data from Google calendar using invokeURL. I want to create meetings in CRM from this URL response. The invokeURL response contains over 100 records and works perfectly (code line 2). Then I'm using a For Each

    • Zoho Sheet-Pulling in Data

      I have a module where we track POs, Bills etc (its easier for us this way). In this PO Module, we have a task related to a Job/Deal and various fields for costs. A Supplier on a Job might have several POs in this module for the job. I want to generate

    • Subform Data in v2 REST API

      What is the mechanism for adding subform data in the Creator v2 REST APIs?  There is nothing documented in the Data APIs documentation (https://www.zoho.com/creator/help/api/v2/).   I was able to determine how to GET the subform data by adding it to the

    • Delete Zoho Mail Account accidently from Admin panel

      Is it possible to restore deleted email accounts with all data.

    • How do I delete a test email address to which I am supposed to send a test email?

      How do I delete an email address added to a test email recipient that is no longer needed due to resignation or other reasons?

    • What is Attendee Status 0 and 1?

      Hi there, I recently stumbled upon the API to get the attendee list and in the return value, there is a parameter called "status", and 0 supposed to mean not_attending, and 1 means attending. I cannot find this representation anywhere in the attendee

    • Kaizen #121 : Customize List Views using Client Script

      Hello everyone! Welcome back to another interesting Kaizen post. In this post, we can discuss how to customize List Views using Client Script. This post will answer the questions Ability to remove public views by the super admin in the Zoho CRM and Is

    • Load form in iframe without header

      I am trying to load a form into an iframe without the header, but I am not having any luck. I am using openUrl() to load the iframe with the form URL and zc_Header set to false, e.g. #Form:Add_Case?zc_Header=false but it is still loading the header. Any

    • Can I use ZOHO calendar to schedule a Youtube video that is already in my youtube account, but listed as private or unlisted?

      I am creating Youtube videos and shorts and then uploading them to our Channel so others can view and approve. Once approved I would like to just schedule them over the next few days within Zoho. So far it looks like I have to re-upload the video to Zoho

    • Batch Number on Packing Slip

      When we send orders to our warehouse, we want to tell them the batch number to pull from the shelf.  It seems we should be able to pick the batch when assembling the package. In the current Inventory, we have to create an invoice, pick batches for the invoice.  This is too late.   As a workaround, we are sending the invoice to the warehouse (via a template that removes most of the price information).  This is cumbersome and causes our warehouse to see the total invoice price (which can't be removed

    • Editing a bundle

      How can I edit a bundle?

    • Saving URL for Submitted Forms

      The unique URL for submitted forms should be saved automatically within 'System Fields'. (without sending a duplicate email to myself, there is no other way to retrieve the unique URL for a submitted form if the user wishes to update) Additionally, it

    • Implement Meeting Polls in Zoho Bookings

      Dear Zoho Bookings Support Team, We'd like to propose a feature enhancement related to appointment scheduling within Zoho Bookings. Current Functionality: Zoho Bookings excels at streamlining individual appointment scheduling. Users can set availability

    • Response from a customer via web channel

      Is it possible to ensure that a customer using the web channel can respond to an agent's question without creating a new thread but instead linking their response to the existing thread?

    • Venezuelan Bolivares missing from available currencies

      My mother is ill and lives in Venezuela. I do her finances and insurance expences related to medical billing. Most receipts are in Venezuelan Bolivares. However I cannot find this currency. I am migrating from Expensify which conveniently has Bolivares

    • Next Page