How to Create Zoom Meetings with Google Script

May 28, 2023

How to use the Zoom API to automatically create and schedule Zoom meetings with Google Apps Script

This guide describes how you can programmatically create user meetings in your Zoom account with the help of Google Apps Script and the official Zoom API.

As a first step, go to the Zoom Developer Dashboard and create a new app. Choose JWT as the app type and make a note of the Zoom API key and secret. We can build Zoom apps with the OAuth2 library as well but since this app is only for internal use and will not be publish to the Zoom marketplace, the JWT approach is easier.

Create Zoom App

The app would involve two step. We’ll connect to the /api.zoom.us/v2/users/ API to get the Zoom ID of current authenticated user. Next, we make a POST request to the /v2/users/<<ZoomUserId>>/meetings endpoint to create the actual Zoom meeting.

Generate the Zoom Access Token

const ZOOM_API_KEY = '<Your Zoom key here>>';
const ZOOM_API_SECRET = '<Your Zoom secret here>';
const ZOOM_EMAIL = '<Your Zoom account email here>';

const getZoomAccessToken = () => {
  const encode = (text) => Utilities.base64Encode(text).replace(/=+$/, '');
  const header = { alg: 'HS256', typ: 'JWT' };
  const encodedHeader = encode(JSON.stringify(header));
  const payload = {
    iss: ZOOM_API_KEY,
    exp: Date.now() + 3600,
  };
  const encodedPayload = encode(JSON.stringify(payload));
  const toSign = `${encodedHeader}.${encodedPayload}`;
  const signature = encode(Utilities.computeHmacSha256Signature(toSign, ZOOM_API_SECRET));
  return `${toSign}.${signature}`;
};

Get the Internal User Id of the current user

const getZoomUserId = () => {
  const request = UrlFetchApp.fetch('https://api.zoom.us/v2/users/', {
    method: 'GET',
    contentType: 'application/json',
    headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${getZoomAccessToken()}` },
  });
  const { users } = JSON.parse(request.getContentText());
  const [{ id } = {}] = users.filter(({ email }) => email === ZOOM_EMAIL);
  return id;
};

Schedule a Zoom Meeting

You can create an Instant meeting or schedule a meeting with a fixed duration. The meeting start time is specified in yyyy-MM-ddThh:mm:ss format with the specified timezone.

The complete list of meeting options is available here while the timezones are available here.

const createZoomMeeting = () => {
  const meetingOptions = {
    topic: 'Zoom Meeting created with Google Script',
    type: 1,
    start_time: '2020-07-30T10:45:00',
    duration: 30,
    timezone: 'America/New_York',
    password: 'labnol',
    agenda: 'Discuss the product launch',
    settings: {
      auto_recording: 'none',
      mute_upon_entry: true,
    },
  };

  const request = UrlFetchApp.fetch(`https://api.zoom.us/v2/users/${getZoomUserId()}/meetings`, {
    method: 'POST',
    contentType: 'application/json',
    headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${getZoomAccessToken()}` },
    payload: JSON.stringify(meetingOptions),
  });
  const { join_url, id } = JSON.parse(request.getContentText());
  Logger.log(`Zoom meeting ${id} created`, join_url);
};

The app can be enhanced to automatically add new participants to a meeting after they register their email address on, say, Google Forms. In that case, a POST request is made to /meetings/{meetingId}/registrants with the email address and first name of the participant in the request body.

Google Apps Script

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Amit Agarwal

Google Developer Expert, Google Cloud Champion

Amit Agarwal is a Google Developer Expert in Google Workspace and Google Apps Script. He holds an engineering degree in Computer Science (I.I.T.) and is the first professional blogger in India.

Amit has developed several popular Google add-ons including Mail Merge for Gmail and Document Studio. Read more on Lifehacker and YourStory