Overview


Viewer interactivity within live sessions is critical to engage a live audience. With interactivity, your audience can have an engaged, active video-viewing experience as they have a way to participate in a discussion, provide feedback or ask questions as they can in social media apps like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, etc. that offer live video streaming.


VIDIZMO provides several interactivity options to its end-users during a live streaming session. These interactivity options include:

  • live chat feature for the session participants, 
  • a Q&A section where participants can leave their questions and users having Moderator+ roles can provide their responses. However, all participants can view these queries and their responses, 
  • a list of chat participants that is only displayed to users with Moderator+ roles, allowing them to block/unblock participants as well, 
  • a view of integrated Twitter feed, 
  • a view of integrated Yammer feed and 
  • a view of an FAQ section where the frequently-asked questions have been phrased and answered by any Moderator+ role while scheduling the live webcast.


Before You Start


  • VIDIZMO has in-built Live Chat feature, that allows users to seamlessly interact during casting of a live session. VIDIZMO Chat does not require any detailed steps of configuration and is enabled by default in customers' main portal and all sub-portals. However, if your organization has a wide base of users that will be actively participating in a Live session, then you may configure Live Chat Application using Azure Service Bus. For more details, read How to Configure Live Chat Application using Azure Service Bus, 

  • Before you schedule a live stream and set its interactivity options, make sure that you have an ECDN node and publishing point configured. To know more, read 

  • Moderators, Managers and Administrators can enable/disable interactivity options during a live session. 


Enabling Interactivity Options in a Live Session

Here is how you can enable different interactivity options during a live webcast:


1. From any page of the application, click on the red Add New Media (+) icon towards the bottom right-hand corner




2. Next, click on Schedule Live Webcast




3. To know how to configure details of a live session, see this article: How to Schedule a Live Webcast. To enable interactivity options for the live session, navigate to the Interactivity tab as shown below




4. In the Interactivity tab, you can enable following options for configuring viewer interactivity on the live session:

i. Select Enable Live Chat to enable chat for the session participants. This allows registered users to leave their messages in the chat box, while anonymous users can specify a name via which their messages appear. Furthermore, participants can respond to specific messages, allowing the chat box to serve as a more collaborative medium for the viewers

ii. Select Enable Chat Archiving so that once the live session ends, the live chat appears as comments at the bottom of the playback page

iii. Select Show Yammer Feed to enable Yammer feed display during the live session. Enabling this option prompts the user to define Yammer Feed Type and its corresponding Yammer Feed ID. The types of Yammer Feed can be: My Feed, Group, User, Topic and their Feed ID can be accessed by navigating to the specific feed in the Yammer web application and copying it from the URL. As an example, see How do I find a Yammer group's feedID?

iv. Select Show Twitter Feed to enable Twitter feed display during the live session. Enabling this option prompts the user to define Twitter Embed Code. To know more about the types of timelines Twitter provides for embedding and how to generate one, read How to embed a timeline

v. Select Enable Q&A for viewers to enable a section on the live page which allows participants to ask their questions to which only Moderator+ roles can respond. However, all questions and their responses are displayed to all viewers of the live session

vi. Select Show FAQs to provide a section to the viewers where they can read FAQs related to the live session. Selecting this option prompts the user to enter the list of FAQs in a text editor which will be displayed as is on the live page

vii. Click on Save and Close to save your changes




Interactivity Options During Live Session

To see these interactivity options on the live session page, navigate to your session by clicking on its title:



On the right-hand side of the page, you'll see a section containing all interactivity options:




1. Live Chat  


The first section is the Chat that contains following details:

i. By default, a button Start Meeting is showing in this section. Moderator+ role must click this button in order to start collaboration in the chatbox and Q&A section of the live session



ii. If the host (any Moderator+ role) does not start the meeting then the viewers will see a message as displayed



iii. Once the meeting is started, logged in users can directly leave their messages in the chatbox. If the session is open for anonymous viewers then the unregistered users must specify their names and Join the chatroom in order to start chatting




iv. The name that an anonymous viewer specifies can be edited by the viewer at any point of the session




v. Show Chat History allows the users to load any prior conversation that has been carried out in the session

vi. Participants can type a message in the chat editor and click the button Send or can also allow enable the option of pressing Enter to send the message

vii. Moreover, users can also specifically respond to messages in the chatbox by clicking on the Reply icon




viii. Furthermore, Moderator+ roles can Pause/Resume the Chat and Q&A sessions which prompts a message to the end user as displayed  


 



ix. Participants can also Leave and Join back the chatroom and Q&A section. 


 



2. Q&A Section  


The second section is Q&A where:

i. All participants can post their questions

ii. Only Moderator+ roles can respond to the posted questions

iii. It also specifies the total number of questions posted and the number of questions that have been responded to

iv. There's an option for Moderator+ roles to Export Q&A session as a text file that can be later on shared as necessary

v. Clicking on the Replies on a question expands/collapses its answers




3. Participants


The third section is about the Participants of the live session. This section is only accessible to Moderator+ roles where

i. A list of participants is displayed, along with the information of when each participant joined and/or left the session

ii. A filter option that expands a Search bar and a dropdown for filtering All/Blocked/Unblocked viewers

iii. Moderator+ roles can also Block/Unblock participants from the live chat and Q&A section




iv. Blocking users shows a message to the end-users as displayed




4. Twitter Feed 


The fourth section is the Twitter feed that displays the embedded Twitter timeline 


 

 
 

5. Yammer Feed 


The fifth section is the Yammer feed, displaying integrated Yammer conversations.


Note: If you are not already logged into your Yammer account, this section will first prompt you to enter your credentials.



6. FAQ Section 


The last section is FAQs where the frequently-asked questions have been phrased and answered by any Moderator+ role while scheduling the live webcast 




These are the options provided by VIDIZMO to its customers, increasing viewer interactivity with the content streamed by your organization. To know more, read How to Share Media on social Media Platforms.



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