Zoom for VILT sessions

EmbayLMS can automatically create a Zoom meeting when you schedule a VILT (virtual instructor-led) session — the Zoom equivalent of the Google Meet integration. You connect your tenant’s own Zoom account under Settings → Integrations → Video Conferencing → Add account → Zoom, and from then on VILT sessions get a Zoom join link automatically.

EmbayLMS connects using a Zoom Server-to-Server OAuth app (account credentials — the modern replacement for JWT apps). There is no per-user “Sign in with Zoom” pop-up; instead you create a Server-to-Server OAuth app in your Zoom account and paste its three credentials into EmbayLMS. The credentials are encrypted (AES-256-GCM) before storage and are never shown to anyone again.

Requirement: a Zoom account where you can create a Server-to-Server OAuth app in the Zoom App Marketplace (Account owner or admin with the Server-to-Server OAuth role). Cloud recording (optional, below) requires a paid Zoom plan.

Step 1 — Create a Server-to-Server OAuth app

1. Sign in to the Zoom App Marketplace → Develop → Build App → Server-to-Server OAuth → Create.
2. Name the app (e.g. EmbayLMS).
3. On the App Credentials screen, copy the three values you’ll paste into EmbayLMS:
   • Account ID
   • Client ID
   • Client Secret
4. Under Scopes, add meeting scopes so EmbayLMS can create, update, and delete meetings on your account — e.g. meeting:write:admin (and meeting:read:admin).
5. Activate the app.

Step 2 — Connect in EmbayLMS

1. Go to Settings → Integrations → Video Conferencing.
2. Click Add account, choose Zoom.
3. Fill in:

4. Click Connect & Verify. EmbayLMS validates the credentials by requesting a token from Zoom; if anything is wrong it tells you and nothing is saved. After connecting, you can re-test or disconnect the account at any time from the same page.

Using it

When you create a VILT session and select this Zoom account, EmbayLMS creates a scheduled Zoom meeting and stores the join link on the session. Specifically:

• The meeting is created with waiting room on, join-before-host off, and mute-on-entry, scheduled at the session’s start time and duration in the session’s timezone.
• Learners see the join link on the session page and in their registration email — exactly like Google Meet.
• Rescheduling a session (new time, duration, or title) updates the Zoom meeting; cancelling the session deletes the meeting so the link stops working.
• If no account is selected, EmbayLMS falls back to platform Zoom credentials when they are configured; otherwise it skips meeting creation.

If meeting creation fails (e.g. credentials revoked or missing scopes), the session still publishes — you can paste a join link manually on the session.

Marking attendance: with webhooks configured (below), EmbayLMS auto-marks attendance from Zoom join/leave events. You can always override any mark manually on the session’s roster — set a registrant present or absent and save. Without webhooks, attendance is fully manual.

Optional — webhooks for auto-attendance and cloud recordings

With a Zoom webhook subscription, EmbayLMS automatically (a) marks attendance as learners join and leave the meeting, and (b) captures the cloud recording link. Both are optional; meeting creation works without them.

1. In your Server-to-Server OAuth app, open the Feature → Event Subscriptions section and add a subscription.
2. Event notification endpoint URL: https://<your-tenant>.embaylms.com/api/webhooks/zoom
3. Subscribe to these events:
   • Meeting → Participant/Host joined meeting (meeting.participant_joined)
   • Meeting → Participant/Host left meeting (meeting.participant_left)
   • Meeting → End Meeting (meeting.ended)
   • Recording → All Recordings have completed (recording.completed) — cloud recording only, paid Zoom plans
4. Validate the endpoint. EmbayLMS answers Zoom’s URL-validation challenge automatically, and verifies every subsequent event’s HMAC signature using the platform’s ZOOM_WEBHOOK_SECRET.

How auto-attendance works. EmbayLMS embeds the session ID in the Zoom meeting’s agenda, so each event is routed to the right session and tenant.

• When a learner joins, EmbayLMS matches them by their Zoom account email to a registered learner and marks them present, awarding session credit immediately (their ILT module completes and course progress recomputes).
• A learner who joins at all counts as present; leave events are recorded to the audit trail but do not remove a present mark.
• When the meeting ends, every registrant who never joined is marked absent, closing the attendance window.
• Every webhook event is written to the append-only audit log (SOC 2 CC6.3).

Email matching matters. Auto-attendance can only match a participant Zoom includes an email for (authenticated joins) whose email equals the learner’s EmbayLMS email. Guests, dial-in-only participants, or learners who join with a different email are not matched — mark them manually on the roster.

Webhook signature verification depends on the platform-level ZOOM_WEBHOOK_SECRET being configured. If it is unset, the webhook endpoint returns 503 and neither attendance nor recording links are captured — meeting creation still works regardless.

Configuration reference

Troubleshooting