Online Groups

EduBook supports three delivery modes for every group:

• In-person — the original mode. Students show up at a physical location; attendance is captured via QR / numeric code or marked manually.
• Online — entirely remote. Students join via a Zoom or Teams link that the system emails before each lesson.
• Hybrid — same group has both in-person and remote students.

Online and hybrid modes are part of the Pro plan. Starter tenants see the option in the group form but it’s locked with an upgrade prompt.

Creating an online group

1. Go to Groups → Add Group and fill the usual fields (name, semester, subject, teacher, capacity, schedule).
2. Under Delivery, pick Online or Hybrid.
3. Pick the meeting platform:
   • Zoom — for auto-attendance and (Enterprise) auto-create meetings. See Connecting Zoom.
   • Microsoft Teams — auto-attendance when Teams integration ships.
   • Other / paste a link — works with any platform (Google Meet, Jitsi, Skype…). You’ll mark attendance manually.
4. Paste the meeting link. For Zoom URLs, the Meeting ID field auto-fills; you can override it for non-Zoom platforms.
5. Optional: a meeting password, and a per-group reminder lead time (defaults to your tenant setting in Settings).
6. Save.

The group’s location field is hidden when you pick Online — there’s no physical room to track. For Hybrid, the location stays visible because some students still attend in person.

What happens before each lesson

A scheduled job runs every 5 minutes and emails the meeting link to every enrolled student about an hour before the lesson (or whatever lead time you’ve configured). Students with no email on file are skipped silently.

Two reminder emails go out by default:

• Lead reminder — the configured lead time before lesson start (default 60 min). Includes the join link, password, teacher name, and a big “Join meeting” button.
• Final reminder — 15 minutes before lesson start. Short “starting soon” with the link. Toggle in Settings → General → Online lesson reminder.

The link is never included in the booking confirmation email or shown on the public booking page — that prevents anyone with the booking URL from getting the join link. Only enrolled students with verified emails get it.

Send the link manually (Send Now)

For late edits or emergencies — the meeting URL changed last minute, or you skipped the lead time — open Groups → ⋯ menu on the group → Send meeting link now. The system blasts the link to every enrolled student immediately and writes a dedup record so the automated cron won’t double-send.

Auto-attendance (Zoom)

When a group is online with Zoom as the platform AND your tenant has connected a Zoom account in Settings → Integrations:

• Every join/leave event from Zoom is logged in the system.
• A student’s cumulative time in the meeting is summed across drops + reconnects.
• When that total reaches the group’s threshold (default 30 minutes, editable per group), the system marks the student present automatically. Source = zoom in the attendance log.
• Matching is by email first, then phone — make sure students join Zoom with the email or phone you have on file.

For platforms other than Zoom, you mark attendance manually from the roster — same UI as in-person, just no QR/code panel.

Hybrid groups

Hybrid groups treat both populations as one for enrollment, attendance, and reports. A student who joins online still counts against the group’s capacity exactly like an in-person student. The auto-attendance flow runs for the online segment; the QR/code capture works for the in-person segment.

Switching a group to online

Editing an existing offline group and flipping it to Online (or Hybrid) sends an automatic email to every enrolled student: “This group is moving online — watch your inbox before each lesson for the join link.” It does NOT include the link itself; the regular reminder cron picks it up from the next lesson onward.

Plan tiers at a glance

	Starter	Pro	Enterprise
Create online / hybrid groups	❌	✅	✅
Email reminders with link	—	✅	✅
Send Now button	—	✅	✅
Manual roster attendance	—	✅	✅
Zoom / Teams auto-attendance	❌	✅	✅
Auto-create Zoom meetings	❌	❌	✅

If a tenant downgrades, existing online groups stay visible and functional but their meeting fields become read-only. Upgrading restores edit access.