It could be that you do not want everyone to be able to access your virtual rooms or recordings. This article explains how you can restrict access to attendees or users of a certain group.
Our platform allows you to restrict the virtual rooms or on-demand recordings to a specific group. You can find more use cases and options how to set it up below.
Create groups of attendees
First, you will need to create groups for your attendees. To do that, check this article.
Tip! You can restrict content to one group only. This means that you cannot restrict access to everyone in the groups "Virtual" AND "Paid", instead, you would need to create one group "Virtual - Paid".
Restrict access to virtual rooms
Once you have created groups for your attendees, you can restrict room access to one of these groups. Only attendees in this group will be allowed to enter the room.
In the latest studio version:
Go to Event settings > Data types. Select the data type you would like to restrict access to. Turn in the toggle and select one of your groups from the dropdown.
In older studio versions:
Go to Pages & Layout > Data structures. Select the data type you would like to restrict access to. Below Advanced Settings, you will find the option Virtual room can be accessed by. In the dropdown, select one of the groups you previously created.
External virtual rooms can also be restricted to signed-in users only. This way you can make your event public, whilst restricting your virtual rooms.
Restrict tab access
Besides the virtual room button, you can also restrict access to the tabs on the detail page.
In the latest studio version:
Go to Event settings > Data types. Select the type you would like to restrict tab access to. Scroll down to the Content section and select the tab to restrict. Turn in the toggle and select one of your groups from the dropdown.
In older studio versions:
Go to Pages & Layout > Data structures. Select the data type you would like to restrict access to. Below Advanced Settings, you will find the option Tab can be accessed by. Per tab, you can choose select one of the groups you previously created.
The tabs display the following information:- Info: contains the description of the item, and the persons, institutions and classifiers linked to it.
- Schedule: contains the programme items linked to the item.
- Resources: contains the PDFs, websites or other links linked to the item.
- Interactive: contains the interactive features that are set for the item, such as Vote, Ask or Chat.
Specific use cases & advice
Here are some of the most common use cases for restricting access to the virtual room and/or tabs, and how to enable the restriction.
🎟️ You sell different tiers of tickets for your event, for example by day or by member type
In this case, you probably want to restrict access to a programme item to only those attendees that have purchased the corresponding ticket.
- In order to enable the restriction, the first step is to create attendee groups that reflect your ticket structure, for example Attendees day 1, Attendees day 2.
- The next step is to ensure that the data structure follows the ticket structure too. Go to Event settings > Data types (or in older versions to Pages & Layout > Data structures). Below Programme items, create as many types of sessions as different tickets you have, and for each of them restrict the access to the corresponding group of attendees:
- Click the + under Program items to add a new type;
- Name: for example Session - day 1, Session - day 2
- Advanced settings - Virtual room can be accessed by: selecting which attendees will be allowed to click on the Enter virtual room or View recordings button on all sessions of this type. Choose one of the groups you previously created from the dropdown menu.
- Advanced settings - Tab can be accessed by: here you can select which attendees can see each of the tabs. You can also rename the tab if you like.
- Advanced settings - Default session banner (optional): here you can upload a banner image, which will appear at the top of the detail page for each session of this data type.
- Info: choose whether you want the info text of the session to be visible in the App or not, whether the info text should be viewable as a button or preview, and give a title to it. Optionally, you can add an icon to it.
- Sections: here, add the data types that your session should be linked to. Most likely, you will want to include at least the Speakers (roles), the Presentations (children) and classifiers such as Topics (related). If the V1 of your App was delivered with a generic data type called Session, we recommend that you include the exact same sections as that one. - The last step is to apply the new structure to your programme so that the restriction becomes effective.
- Go to Data > Programme items, and filter by Sessions.
- Select all the sessions belonging to your first ticket type (for example, all sessions of Day 1)
- Click Edit selected and, under Type, select the first ticket type, which you created in step 2 (for example "Session - day 1").
- Repeat for the other ticket types.
🌐 Your event is hybrid - you have both onsite and online attendees
In this case, you might want to restrict access to the virtual rooms to only those attendees that have registered for online (remote) attendance. With that, you maximise the engagement of your event by ensuring onsite attendees go to the event physically and don't connect from their hotel rooms.
In order to do that, follow these simple steps:
- The first step is to create attendee groups that reflect the two types of attendees, for example Onsite and Online.
- Go to Event settings > Data types (or in older versions to Pages & Layout > Data structures). Below Programme items, click on the item Sessions and open the Advanced Settings. Below Virtual room can be accessed by, select which attendees will be allowed to click the Enter virtual room or View recordings button on all sessions of this type. Choose the Online group and save.
🔓 Your event app is public, but it contains valuable attendee-only information
In this case, you might want to restrict that information to only paying attendees. Whether it is abstracts, poster PDFs, presentation videos, and of course the virtual rooms if your event is virtual.
In order to do that, follow these steps:
- The first step is to create an attendee group that includes all paying attendees.
- Go to Event settings > Data types (or in older versions to Pages & Layout > Data structures). Below Programme items, select the data type which contains the information you want to restrict (most likely session, presentation or poster) and open the Advanced Settings. Below Virtual room can be accessed by, select which attendees will be allowed to click the Enter virtual room or View recordings button on all sessions of this type. If your event is virtual, choose the paying attendees group.