How to join Webinar using Instant Join instead of Desktop app on Windows

[Andrew6]

We are in a locked down corporate environment, and users cannot join webinars because we do not allow software downloads or installs.  I have seen the page for the Instant Join option, which says "This can be especially beneficial for users who are having trouble installing the desktop app or are in locked-down environments that can't download software". 

That's great, but the page does not give any instructions for how to join a Webinar using Instant Join!  It only says "If you join from a computer running an operating system that is supported by the desktop app, then the desktop app will automatically begin downloading and launch you into session".  Well, that's useless because the operating system supports the desktop app, but the locked down environment does not.

How can we force the Instant Join method?  Our users have Chrome, so that's not an issue.  This is a big problem because many users need to join webinars and meetings, and we cannot relax security for this.  If they could join webinars and meetings via Chrome with no additional software, that would resolve the issue perfectly.  Thanks!

[Todd2]

Did you ever find a solution for this? I'm working with some gov't agencies who aren't able to download the desktop app. I even spoke to support on the phone and they told me this should work, but it doesn't.

[GlennD · Accepted solution]

Hi,

If you add the following code to the end of your webinar attendee join links it will force you to join using the Instant Join app: 
?clientType=html5

So your join link will end up looking like: https://global.gotowebinar.com/join/1142918520461700609/830372945?clientType=html5

[Todd2]

Yes! That did it. Thanks, Glenn. Can I recommend that this information is officially updated somewhere? No one else seems to know the solution except for you.

[GlennD]

It's not an official solution yet which is why it has not been published widely, but the team is aware that we need to create an official scaleable version of it.

[Todd2]

I understand. I tested it out on a few web browsers and noted that it works best in Chrome, works in Firefox (requires call-in for audio), and does not work well in IE. Do you know if there are any plans to enhance IE functionality? I ask because many of the gov't agencies I'm working with on webinars are very limited in terms of what is installed on their computers, with IE being default on most.

EDIT: Also, I've had to go in and remove these folks who I had set as panelists and asked them to register as traditional attendees. If they are panelists or above, the system will either default to the application or it will cause an error.

[Andrew6]

Good to know about the clientType trick.  We ended up creating a Chrome shortcut that gives it a parameter to change the reported user-agent, so that remote sites think the client is Linux.  Because that is an unsupported platform for Webinar, it forces the HTML5 client:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/41.0.2227.0 Safari/537.36"

However, the HTML5 client has one fatal shortcoming, cannot view chat messages.  When the host sends a chat message directly to the user or to everyone, the notification appears in the questions pane, but when you click it, there is no chat message.  I hope they get that fixed ASAP.

[Keith6]

Glenn, thanks for this. Many attendees to our webinars are in a similar position to the OP.

Please can you advise how we can have this suffix added to the attendee join links that go out? Or is the only way to do this, for us to manually email out join links to registrants?

I have also noticed that when a user joins in this way they can view the presenter's screen as soon as screen sharing starts, but BEFORE the "start broadcast" button has been pressed!  They do not get the audio until the broadcast is started.

[Jamie51]

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Instant Join App for GoToWebinar on Windwos machines.

I need to know if someone running Windows can use the instant join app for GoToWebinar as a lot of people wanting to attend our Webinars will be using Government computers and are unable to install files on their computers. 

I am testing it at the moment and have tried app.gotomeeting.com to work for GoToMeeting through the brower on Windows 10 with Chrome but can't get it to work with GoToWebinar. Is there a different link to get GoToWebinar to work on the web browser without the download popping up?

[N.s Parameswara]

thanks glen. it worked