How can I allow presenters in early for a meeting that requires registration?

[Nicholas1]

When creating meetings through the XML API, I get an error if I attempt to use both of the following attributes:

• <openTime>2700</openTime>
• <registration>true</registration>

We usually have one host who controls the webinar, and then multiple presenters.  Our presenters do not have host accounts on Webex so we were planning to register them as normal users, allow everyone in 45 minutes early through Webex, and then control access times via our own website to keep attendees out until the meeting time.

Why can we not use these two arguments together, and how should we handle this situation given that limitation?

[Nicholas1]

I guess the obvious follow up to this is the value of registration.  Users are already registered on our system, but we will need to download attendance reports after the webinar and link users back to users in our system.  We had planned to send our unique user identifier along with the registration data to link back.  But is there a way to link users in attendance reports back to users in our system if we turn registration off?

[nmorrow · Accepted solution]

Disabling registration, while allowing join before host, will prevent unique registration IDs for attendees. Unregistered attendees are tracked as raw data in reports, matching would be done by comparing name and email address to values you store. If you develop a custom portal for attendees to join meetings, you can control the name and email address that are set when joining the meeting. You can refer to the XML API request meeting.GetjoinurlMeeting, which allows you to create a custom join link for an individual attendee, setting the meeting key, email address, and name, along with a meeting password if one exists. An added benefit of this custom URL is that if all required values are included, it will launch an attendee directly in to the WebEx session with no need to fill out a join form and click a separate join button.