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Automatically Set Up Zoom Meetings for your Appointments

Zoom is a popular platform for conducting coaching sessions, and for good reason!  If you’re not meeting in person, it’s more or less the next best thing: face-to-face video calls that are easy to set up and easy to join, for you and your clients.

CoachAccountable now allows you to connect your Zoom account, which means the system can automatically set up Zoom Meetings for your appointments.

Here’s the gist in one minute:

Let’s see how it works!

Connecting CoachAccountable to Zoom

You’ll find the place to connect to your Zoom account under Settings >> Appointment Config >> Zoom Meetings.

The in-app verbiage makes it pretty clear what’s going on and what to do next:

Connect CoachAccountable with Zoom

Use Zoom? Already logged in?  If so, you’re literally 2 clicks away from connecting your account.

Clicking the big “Let’s go do that!” button brings you over to Zoom.  If you’re not logged in already, you’ll be prompted to do so (or have the chance to sign up for a new Zoom account).

Once logged in, you’ll see the following prompt asking for your authorization to allow CoachAccountable to connect:

Zoom authorization

All CA needs, permission-wise, is the ability to read and write to your Meetings.

Assuming you click “Authorize”, you’ll be whisked back to CoachAccountable and presented with the opportunity to set your preferences for Zoom meeting.

Set Zoom Meeting Preferences

This selection essentially amounts to letting CA know which of your Appointment Types should typically entail a Zoom Meeting:

Zoom Appointment Settings

Here we answer the (hopefully) simple question: which types of appointment do you generally conduct via Zoom?

The “Always” and “Never” tell CA that a Zoom meeting (or lack thereof!) should be taken as a foregone conclusion for all appointments of that type.  Choosing the “Usually” or “Usually not” option means CA will present you with a checkbox option that you can check or not check (in order to set up or not set up a Zoom meeting) when scheduling an appointment.

The other settings mirror the usual Zoom Meeting settings:

  • Enable clients to join before me
  • Enable waiting room
  • Set passwords for meetings (great for security concerns)
  • Start meeting with video enabled
  • Record meetings automatically

(Note also that here, at the bottom, is where you can disconnect CA from your Zoom account, should you ever wish to.)

Here’s what scheduling an appointment looks like for an Appointment Type whose Zoom meeting preference is set to “Always”:

Zoom Will Be Scheduled

Note how it says “A Zoom meeting will be scheduled for this appointment.”, the “Always” setting in action.

When your clients schedule with you, they’ll never see controls related to Zoom.  Instead, the system will automatically create those meetings for Appointment Types that are set to either “Always” or “Usually” have Zoom Meetings.

Once an Appointment is scheduled with a Zoom Meeting, you’ll be able to see it’s been added to your Meetings over in your Zoom account:

Looks about right! Though in general you’ll not need to keep up with things scheduled over here, since it’ll be in CA.  Also, beware that Delete button: if you delete it there, CA won’t know about it.

Zoom Meetings for Already-Scheduled Appointments

Add a Zoom Meeting

If you didn’t do so when originally scheduled, you can add a Zoom Meeting to already-scheduled Appointments.  Just click to modify an Appointment and, so long as it’s of a type that is set to usually or always have a Zoom Meeting, you’ll find a button by which to do so:

Quickly add Zoom Meetings to your already-scheduled CoachAccountable appointments.

Quickly add Zoom Meetings to your already-scheduled appointments.

When modifying an already-scheduled appointment, you can see the corresponding Zoom Meeting that has been scheduled:

If you have a change of heart, you can remove the Zoom Meeting with a click.

If you have a change of heart, you can remove the Zoom Meeting with a click.

Note the “Location” field has been set to the exact URL by which you and your clients will be able to access the Meeting.

Where to Access the Zoom Meeting Link

Having the Zoom URL as the location for an appointment means it will be easy to find (and thus the meeting easy to join) for both parties.  It can be found in:

Notifications – That exact meeting’s URL will be present in the Appointment notifications and reminders you and your client get.

Client AND Coach Calendars – You’ll also see the URL automatically as part of the event in any calendars that you or your client have synced with.  That means the meeting will be super easy to join for both parties.

In-App – Appointments that have Zoom Meetings set will also show the “join now” link in-app; just click on the calendar icon or name of the appointment as found in the upcoming appointments listing:

Join Zoom Meeting from CoachAccountable

One click from within CA to join… nice!

Deleting Zoom Meetings

You might have CA schedule one for you but later decide you don’t need it.  You COULD delete it from within Zoom, but don’t.  If you delete it there, CA won’t know about it and with blithely go on showing the “join now” link to you and your clients.

But more to the point, there’s no need (after all, the whole point of this integration is to have things all in one place!).  You can delete a Zoom meeting from within CA; just go to modify an appointment that has the meeting set and click the “remove this…” button.

And that’s it!  Just connect your Zoom account, choose which appointment types should have Zoom meetings, and set those meetings automatically when scheduling your appointments as usual.  The “join now” links will be readily presented to you and your clients.

Zoom meetings are a best-in-class way to conduct your remote coaching sessions.  By integrating them in with everything else that CA appointments provide, you’ve got an even more powerful system for scheduling with your clients with the least work possible.  Enjoy!


Ready to supercharge your appointments with automated pre- and post-session Worksheets, client scheduling with reminders, Google & Outlook calendar sync, and now integrated Zoom meetings? Sign up for CoachAccountable. It’s free for 30 days – click here to begin. 



11 Comments

  1. noelle

    this is AMAZING!
    thank you coach accountable — you are making coach life so much easier.

    September 19, 2019 @ 4:48 pm

  2. CA keeps just getting better and better.

    Keep it up!

    Glenn

    September 20, 2019 @ 5:48 am

  3. Ulysses Baltazar

    THIS IS LEGIT!!! Thank you CA! This made our accountability calls much more seamless!

    September 20, 2019 @ 12:40 pm

  4. Debra Wilson Guttas

    Awesome, John! With this change it might be time for me to transition from Instant Teleseminar for my group calls! Thank you!

    September 20, 2019 @ 1:52 pm

  5. Morgan

    Woohoo! So happy you are happy, Noelle, Glenn, Ulysses, and Debra:) Fingers crossed you can drop that extra system, Debra. Let us know!

    September 20, 2019 @ 6:15 pm

  6. Kendall

    Hi John and Morgan,

    Just 3 words…awesome, awesome, awesome and one more THANKS!! What a dream :-). Really appreciate you making my life so much smoother and easier!

    September 21, 2019 @ 7:57 am

  7. Drew Boa

    So good. Faster, better, more enjoyable

    September 21, 2019 @ 12:47 pm

  8. Lydia Hill

    Is there a way to link other virtual platforms to CoachAcccounatable? We are a nonprofit training site and pay for Google Enterprise, which includes Google Meet. Adding Zoom would be an additional cost for us and one that would require a lot of justification for the board and funders to cover to platforms.

    November 17, 2020 @ 9:05 am

  9. Morgan

    Hi Lydia, if you’d like to stick with Google Meet instead, your coaches can enter in the link for the Google Meet into the location field for each appointment as you book it. Then it’ll show in-app as well as in appointment reminders. There isn’t a direct integration with Google Meet (as we learned that an overwhelming percentage of coaches use Zoom), so the aforementioned other method will hopefully be a good fit for your non-profit without any additional cost.

    November 25, 2020 @ 5:00 pm

  10. Kimberley

    Hi are there plans to integrate with MS Teams? Maybe give clients the option to select Zoom or Teams as the meeting location? Since the Zoom security concerns and companies rolling out MS Teams in the pandemic, we have found that more of our coaching clients are requiring us to use MS Teams and have blocked Zoom. As a coach, I’d like to connect both and have clients select which one works for their preference. Thanks.

    March 29, 2021 @ 8:19 pm

  11. Morgan

    Hi Kimberley, as I mentioned to a previous commenter, we learned that a huge majority of coaching companies use Zoom (something over 80% of CoachAccountable customers), with the distant second and third being Google Meet and MS Teams, respectively. Since some of your clients are blocking Zoom, I’d suggest setting your selection to be “usually not”, then choose to add either a link to the MS Teams meeting in the Location field, or add the Zoom meeting for those who have chosen Zoom.

    At this time no plans to add other meeting software since Zoom remains the most popular choice thus far, though we understand that all softwares (including Zoom) have their limitations!

    March 30, 2021 @ 1:21 pm