This tutorial will show you how to connect StreamAlive to a Hybrid session. If you’d like to learn how to connect to other platforms, please refer to our other articles.
Engaging a hybrid audience—where some participants are in-person while others join virtually—can be challenging. StreamAlive makes it easier by allowing everyone to participate in real-time, whether they are in the room or joining remotely.
StreamAlive’s browser-based chat and direct integration with online platforms are the keys to this hybrid approach.
The browser-based chat works smoothly on mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops, allowing every audience member to engage easily. Just like a regular chat app, participants can type their responses, and when an interaction is triggered on the presenter’s screen, the chat notifies them that their input is being recorded.
At the same time, StreamAlive’s direct integration with platforms like Zoom, Teams, and YouTube Live enables virtual attendees to participate seamlessly by typing their responses directly into the meeting or streaming platform’s chat.
Both in-person and virtual attendees can participate:
In-person audience: They can scan a QR code or follow a shared link to join the browser-based chat on their devices.
Virtual audience: They can either use the browser-based chat or interact directly within their meeting platform’s chat (e.g., Zoom, Teams, or YouTube Live).
In this article, we’ll walk you through setting up your interactions so both in-person and remote participants can engage seamlessly. Let’s get started!
With that being said, let us dive into the steps of connecting the StreamAlive bot to your Hybrid session:
Access the Sessions tab
On the StreamAlive homepage, click on the Sessions tab on the left-side menu.
Create a new session
Once you’re on the Sessions page, you can view all your past sessions completed as well as the upcoming sessions. To schedule a new session use the + Add session button on the top-right corner of the page.
To proceed to the next step, let us schedule a meeting.
Choose a platform
A pop-up window will appear showing you the supported platforms. Click on Hybrid.
Fill in the session/meeting title and choose a secondary platform to connect to
This is the platform that your virtual attendees will join from.
For this tutorial, we’ll be choosing Google Meet as our platform. You can learn how to connect StreamAlive to all our other supported platforms here.
Enter your Google Meet meeting details. For this step:
Enter the meeting link.
If you need help finding the meeting link, please refer to our article on How do I find the Google Meet linkEnter the date and time of the upcoming session. This is for your reference and to ensure the correct order of your live sessions in StreamAlive when you add additional sessions.
Click on the Next to proceed
Add your presentation to the session (OPTIONAL)
Your presentation contains your polls, word clouds, spinner wheels, and other interactions that are powered through StreamAlive using the chat.
If you don't have a presentation prepared you can continue without one and use thequick interactions instead. As the name suggests it’s quick to get an interaction set up but for some interactions like polls your audience will have to wait for you to enter the poll answer options.
If you want to plan your interactions in advance such as poll questions and answer options, use a presentation to plan your interactions and slides in advance, you can create a presentation by clicking on the + New presentation button on the bottom left corner of the pop-up.
Now, once selected, click on Add session.
Your session has been scheduled.
When it’s time for your session to start, find your scheduled session and click on Present
A pop-up will appear asking if you would like to display an overlay asking your audience to type the answers in the chat.
Typing in the chat to interact with a poll or word cloud is such a new experience for many audience members that they need a prompt or push to “put it in the chat”.
The Presentation LIVE screen will open in a new tab
Admit the StreamAlive bot in Google Meet
You’ll hear and see a notification letting you know that the StreamAlive bot is trying to access your meeting.
If you don’t admit the bot then StreamAlive won’t be able to read the chat and your interactions will not work for your virtual attendees.
If you don’t get a notification asking to admit the StreamAlive bot, try closing the StreamAlive presentation window and trying again.
If the bot doesn’t enter your meeting or you don’t get the bot notification, refer to our troubleshooting documentation on steps to take to fix this.
Share your screen
Once the bot is in, use the Present now option in Google Meet to share the StreamAlive live presentation screen with your audience. It’s just like sharing a PowerPoint or Google Slides presentation.
Participation for in-person and virtual attendees
First we’ll look at how to get your in-person attendees ready to participate in your audience interactions.
They will need to join the browser-based chat provided by StreamAlive.
In the live presentation screen, you will find the joining info for in-person attendees by clicking on the QR code button in the bottom menu.
A pop-up will appear with the joining info
You can choose to join by scanning the QR code or join through chat.streamalive.com and enter the meeting/session code given.
For this tutorial, we’ll be joining through chat.streamalive.com. However, the steps will be the same for the QR code except for the additional step of adding the meeting/session code when joining through the link.
Go to chat.streamalive.com
Once you’ve opened the link, enter the meeting/session code and click on Join.
StreamAlive supports Single-Sign On and employee or student authentication for the browser-based app. It needs to be activated for your account so please contact support if authentication and SSO is something that you require.
Enter your name or a name that others recognize you by. Your audience can also be anonymous if required.
The chat interface which you can use to interact with the StreamAlive interactions will load
Bring up an interaction on your go live presentation screen
This is what will be shown on your screen. If you’re using a projector or large TV, then this should be what your audience sees.
This is what your audience will see in the browser-based chat. Above the chat box a notification will let the audience know that they are typing responses for an interaction. Ask your audience to start typing in responses in the chat.
StreamAlive picks up these responses in the browser chat to power the interactions
Participation for virtual attendees
For your virtual attendees, they can either join the browser-based chat like the in-person attendees, or they can simply type in the chat of the meeting platform.
When the interaction you created in your presentation is shown on the screen you can ask your audience to enter their answers in the chat.
If you want to learn about how the interactions work, click here