The two different use cases of the Coviu API
The Coviu API has been developed to make Coviu meeting rooms available within other applications.
To understand what a Coviu meeting room is, check out:
What functionality does the Coviu API provide?
Coviu rooms are used as part of appointment bookings where the appointment bookings are made in another application.
A Coviu room that is booked for a particular date, as well as start and end time is called a Coviu session. A booked Coviu room cannot be entered at any other time than during the time it is booked for.
The Coviu session API provides REST API calls to create Coviu sessions and put the links to these sessions into your application.
Coviu provides server-side SDKs for the creation of Coviu sessions.
On the client in a Web browser, you only need an iFrame to use a Coviu session. For iOS or Android, we provide a native SDK to embed the Coviu session into your application.
For more details on the inner workings of the REST API, read The Coviu Session API primer.
How do I use the Coviu API?
There are two use cases that Coviu supports for integrations:
- Coviu as a technology solution:
This Coviu API provides a Platform as a Service (PaaS): we provide video consultation rooms, you pay for using them. - Coviu as an application partner:
This Coviu API provides application integrations: your users allow your application to create video consultation rooms for them to be used within your application. Your users are directly signed up with us and pay for their use of Coviu.
Coviu as a technology solution
Using Coviu as a PaaS is actually quite similar to using Stripe to take payments: we merely provide the technical solution for you to hold online consultations.
In order to set up Coviu session for your use, we need you to authenticate with us. Then to book Coviu sessions, you provide us with some details about:
- Date, start and end time of consultation
- Who is to be a room "owner" (i.e. can enter the room without knocking)
- Who is to be a room "guest" (i.e. can enter the room only after knocking and being allowed in by an owner)
The date, start and end time restrict the room from being used at any time outside the booked session time.
Providing us with the name of the owners and guests enables us to set up the room entry workflow for your usage.
Note that we treat room owners and guests as mere strings in this interface - they are not entities that we manage.
The Coviu PaaS API charges you on a usage base.
Coviu as an application partner
Using Coviu in partnership means that we both accept that each of our applications is useful stand-alone to our users, but that our users get extra value from an integration between our applications.
For example, many applications integrate with Xero to forward financial data to their user's Xero account where their users mange their finances.
Similarly, Coviu can integrate with your application to forward video consultation statistics and data back to Coviu. This also enables your application to link into a Coviu consultation, so you are able to provide the Coviu session functionality right from within your application.
Integrating with Coviu in this way costs you nothing, because your users will be signed up directly with us and pay for the functionality on our site.
You still start by authenticating with the Coviu API using OAuth. Then you link up your application to ours by providing a OAuth redirect URL. When your user links up their account on your site with a Coviu account, they follow the OAuth grant flow and are then able to create Coviu sessions on your site.
How do I get started?
Your first step is to sign up for a Coviu API account.