Simplest way to create a personal Zoom management tool?

API and Webhooks
1

I’m a software engineer that’s new to Zoom. Like many churches in the pandemic, mine has moved its services completely to Zoom. It’s working well, but there are certain useful management tasks which the standard Zoom apps don’t support, and I’d like to help out by writing one or more custom support tools.

For instance, people keep leaving their mics on and talking over the service, so the meeting manager is forever muting everyone, but that also mutes the minister. I’d like to make a simple tool that does the following:

  1. Keeps a list of “central” users (e.g. the minister, the music director, the lay leader)
  2. Has a button to mute everyone EXCEPT the “central” users.

This tool would live on someone’s computer and be invoked by them, perhaps as a web page, or perhaps from the command line. It would do the following:

  1. Accept the host’s Zoom username and password, and the meeting ID
  2. Ask for the list of users in the meeting
  3. Ask for info (e.g. name) about each user
  4. On command, request muting of some subset of the users in the meeting

I’ve looked at the Zoom API, and it’s nice and lush and complete, but there are so many options it’s hard to identify the first step. I don’t need to publish on the marketplace, I don’t need easy installation, I don’t need a gorgeous UI. I just need a quick-and-dirty tool that meets our own needs.

What’s a good way to get started on this?

Thanks,
Dan

1 Like
2

Hey @griscom, thanks for posting and using Zoom!

The simplest way to accomplish this would be to use a Zoom Webinar instead of a Zoom Meeting.

All the attendees in the Zoom Webinar by default do not have the ability to speak. You can also have a small set of users with the ability to speak, called panelists.

Let me know if that helps!

Thanks,
Tommy

3

I was hoping to make my own tool that would have custom abilities Zoom hasn’t implemented. With that in mind, how can I get started in developing? What’s the first step?

4

Hey @griscom,

Take a look at our developer documentation to get started: https://marketplace.zoom.us/docs/guides

Thanks,
Tommy