How to embed zoom video on a moodle website?

How to embed zoom video on a moodle website?

by Tay Moss -
Number of replies: 5

I want to revive a discussion that got closed a few years ago. 

Yes, I'm aware of the "official" Zoom plugin for Moodle, and I'm also aware of the LTI-based approach, which is what I'm currently implementing on my site.

And yes, I would very much like to switch to using BBB--but migrating our institutional partners from Zoom to BBB has met with great resistance.

But I'm wondering if anyone has "solved" the issue of embedding a Zoom window dircetly into a browser window on Moodle? This would be a big help to us with our less tech-savy users, who sometimes get thrown off by the switch to the Zoom app on their desktop or mobile device.  I gather that this is possible using the Zoom SDK Developer kit--so has anyone created a plugin, for example, that does this?

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In reply to Tay Moss

Re: How to embed zoom video on a moodle website?

by Daniel Thies -
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I assume you are referring to https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=411326. Did you try what is suggested there, and did it work? It looks like that should still be able to insert a iframe, but you would need to create a valid room ID manually. Or are you looking for it to do something else?
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In reply to Daniel Thies

Re: How to embed zoom video on a moodle website?

by Tay Moss -

I haven't tried that approach myself, yet, as I wanted to investigate and get opinions before I started mucking around uploading code to the  Dev copy of my site and all that. This seems like a common enough thing that maybe someone has already built a plugin to do it automatically? 

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In reply to Tay Moss

Re: How to embed zoom video on a moodle website?

by AL Rachels -
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I think this might be a case where I will toot Daniel's horn since he did not. He just recently released the, Plenary meeting, activity plugin which also requires the, Deft response block. He and I spent over three hours playing with it on one of my dev sites a few days ago. While the main thrust of the activity is being there to conduct a parliamentary procedure meeting, the fact that it can almost automatically include audio and video for the meeting is very nice. I say almost automatically simply because if the user is like me with multiple microphones and cameras, you have to tell the plugin which ones to use. This setup might be something to take a look at and you can do it on my dev site, if you want to. Just let me know so we can arrange a time.

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In reply to Tay Moss

Re: How to embed zoom video on a moodle website?

by Daniel Thies -
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Hi Tay,

I apologize I have not used the Zoom plugin before, and I did not get what you were asking. It looks like it outputs a table with a series of links or buttons on the view page. One of these is just the join link to open a meeting which you have observed opens a link to the zoom web site or the zoom app. I would have expected an embed there, but that does not appear to be the case.

From the Zoom developer documentation, it looks like embedding the Zoom client in an iframe is not supported, but that embedding a js client a the Moodle site should not be that difficult. As the meeting info is present in the plugin the js client could be added to the view page or a separate page. It would be possible to create a more custom experience with the component API, but I do not think you are interested in that.

You might try contacting the plugin maintainers first and see what their thoughts are on embedding. It would be better for them to support it rather than creating a fork. They may not be interested. As you experienced there is resistance to change with Zoom users. Forcing users to use the standard app may be perceived as an advantage if they are already familiar with it.

Daniel

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In reply to Daniel Thies

Re: How to embed zoom video on a moodle website?

by Daniel Thies -
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I looked at documentation for the Zoom SDK. The licensing is unclear at best. Some parts may be covered by an open source license, but they imply the whole is restricted to customers with certain plans and the license terminates with the plan. They don't actually provide source code, only minimized or compiled JavaScript. All this would be incompatible with GPL so the software should not be distributed along with Moodle. I doubt it can even be linked.

You can contact the Zoom module developers by adding a issue in their tracker on Github. They seem very responsive, but I think they would have already addressed this if it were practical.

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