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Livestream / online sessions

How to set-up livestream sessions

Ollie avatar
Written by Ollie
Updated over a week ago

Our livestream feature is available across all classes and appointments and works with all major video platforms, including Zoom, Youtube and Vimeo. It enables you to create online sessions and update them at any time.

Creating a livestream / online session

Creating a livestream / online session is quick and easy!

Start by creating your new session as you normally would by heading to your Schedule page, clicking the Add new session button and following the steps in our Schedule article.

Once you get to the Session location section, tick the Make available online checkbox.

Online sessions without Zoom integration

If you’ve decided to not integrate Zoom with your Gymcatch account, then you will be presented with a Booking URL field to manually enter your link and a Log in details field where you can enter any details that your customers may need to help them log in and access your online session. You’d then complete the Link visibility to attendees section which you can find information on later in this article.

Zoom integrated online sessions

If you would like to create an integrated Zoom online session on Gymcatch, then you will need to make sure that you have integrated your Zoom account, which you can easily do via the Integrations page and by following the instructions in our Zoom integration article.

Once you've integrated your Zoom account and ticked the Make available online checkbox within the session creation page, you then have three options:

  • You can Enter URL manually and add a link and any login information yourself.

  • You can select Create Zoom meeting to create meeting IDs with custom settings direct within Gymcatch.

  • You can select No URL if you want to market your session as a livestream but add the details later.

If you’ve selected Enter URL then you would follow the same steps as if you hadn’t integrated your Zoom account as stated above.

If you’ve selected Create Zoom meeting, you would then select which Zoom account you would like to use for your online session.

You then have the option of selecting Create unique meeting if you want one URL for each session or if you want to use the same URL across all sessions where anyone can join with the link, select Use personal meeting URL.

If you've selected Create unique meeting, a password will be auto-generated but you can change this if you would like to.

Additional Zoom meeting settings

If you would like to start your Zoom meeting before the start time of the session to give participants the chance to arrive early and check their technology and end it after the finish time of the session to give participants the chance to talk to you after their workout, then you can do this within the Start / End the Zoom meeting fields.

You can then choose whether you would like your video and / or your participant's videos on as default.

If you would like to record your Zoom online session, then you have the option to do that and choose where it will save to. You also have the option to allow customers to join the online session before you, mute customers upon entry and / or enable a waiting room.

You can update this information at any time, so there’s no need to have it set from the moment you start selling your sessions.

Link visibility to attendees

The Link visibility to attendees setting configures at what point the links become visible to your customers in the Gymcatch app and for how long. If you select the Immediately after booking option, then your customers will receive the link within their booking confirmation email, however if you set the link to be available a certain time before the session starts, your customers would then have to click into the session details to access the link.

Please note when creating Zoom meetings, Zoom restricts the number of meetings you can create in a 24 hour period to 100 API calls. So it’s best to do a small number of meeting creates at a time if you’re using Zoom.

Continue creating your session as normal and then click the Create button in the bottom right hand corner to create your online session.

How your online sessions will look to customers

Once created your customers will see that a virtual session is available whenever they see the video icon in your Schedule and you’ll also be able to see this meeting within your Zoom account dashboard if you’ve created an integrated Zoom online session.

To book on customers just follow the normal process and then when they’ve booked, and if applicable paid, they can then access the URL and login details within their Gymcatch account.

These details are also added to customer’s confirmation emails if the link is configured to be available immediately after booking and, if they’ve turned them on, their synced personal calendar entry as well.

You can still set a physical location for your sessions if you wish, just in case you decide to merge virtual and in-person sessions in the future.

Our livestream feature is a part of the standard Gymcatch plan so whatever video platform you use, Gymcatch can now make delivering those online sessions even easier.

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Zoom integration

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