When an alternative_host logs in using a zak, his name in Zoom is the meeting owner's name

API and Webhooks
1

Using the API, I create a meeting owned by a certain user. I also add some alternative_hosts to the meeting. When someone clicks the start_url that is returned from that call, he gets logged into Zoom using the correct name associated with the owner of the meeting. This all works well.

However, if I fetch a zak login token for a user who is in the list of alternative_hosts, and construct a start url using this zak, (so this guy can start the meeting instead of the owner) and open it in a browser, then when Zoom opens, this user doesn’t have his own name, but the name of the meeting owner. I think an alternative host should be able to log in and see his own name.

Is this really intended behavior? Is it a bug? Or is there a bug in my own code?

Thanks.

2

Hey @tim2

Thanks for posting on the Zoom Devforum! I am still learning, but I will try my best to help answer your question. :slightly_smiling_face:

Checkout this related thread that may have the answer you are looking for:

If this thread did not help, please let us know by replying back here and someone from the Developer Relations team will get back to you shortly.

Thanks,
DeveloperBot

3

Thanks, DeveloperBot, but that post doesn’t answer my question.

4

OK, here’s a related question. When creating the URL for the alternative hosts to use, what should it look like? The owner’s start URL looks like this:

https://subdomain.zoom.us/s/{meetingID}?zak={theZakToken}

However, if we register people, the registrants’ URLs look like this: (“w” instead of “s”)

https://subdomain.zoom.us/w/{meetingId}?tk={theirTkToken}

So what should the alternative hosts’ URL look like? Should it use an “s” like the owner? Or something else?

5

I sometimes get the message “If you are the meeting host, sign in to start the meeting” when clicking a link for an alternative host user. Can these tokens (and URLs) only be used once?

7

Hey @tim2,

What is your use case for constructing the start links for the alternative host?

Did you find this flow in our docs somewhere?

Thanks,
Tommy

8

Hi Tommy.

I’ll gladly explain what we’re doing.

We have a website with a pile of people and coaches. We do group training. We don’t want our users to bother with their own Zoom accounts. We want them to just click a link to open Zoom. This way we can do things like set their names to be their real names that we have in our database instead of whatever they might make up. And we don’t want to ask our users to remember yet another password. So far this works great. Using the API, we create a Zoom user to be the Zoom meeting owner. The name of this Zoom user is the name of the coach. The link this coach uses is the start meeting URL, returned when we create the meeting. This way the coach will see his own name in Zoom. Then for each participant in the group, we register them as Zoom registrants. Their Zoom registrant names are set to be the names we have for them in our database. They each get their own URL to join. This also works well.

The problem is that we have assistant coaches and we would like them to be able to start and host a Zoom meeting. If we just gave the assistant coaches the Start URL (the same one the coach uses), their name would be displayed as the coach’s name. It would be better to give each assistant coach his own URL with his own name. I thought that we could create a Zoom user for each assistant coach and just set them to be alternative_hosts, but I can’t seem to create a link that could get these alternative hosts (the assistant coaches) to join with their own name.

Can you help us please Tommy?

Thanks.

p.s. No, I didn’t find this flow in your docs anywhere. I’m a web developer. I’m just guessing.

9

Hey @tim2,

Thanks for this explanation! :slight_smile:

The way alternative hosts work, are when an email is added to that meeting, the start url is sent to that email. For the alternative host to start the meeting, they must be logged into Zoom with that email, and click on the start_url:

A work around to this, if you don’t want the assistants to have a Zoom account and be logged in, you can have them click on the start_url for the meeting, and then they can rename themselves once they are in the meeting.

Thanks,
Tommy

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