Integrate an Event with Microsoft Teams
With this feature you can automatically create a meeting in the application to associate it with the Event. This way, all those enrolled in the Training will receive a notification of the meeting (the Event itself) and will be able to access the videoconference and the chat on the date and time you set.
Remember that this functionality was already available for Courses and Pathways, but in that case what you were creating was a permanent chat room, now it is a one-time meeting. The integration with Teams in Events replaces, or automatically provides, the Virtual room that you could enter when creating the Training. In fact, as you will see later, if you activate this option, the other field is disabled.
Enabling the integration with MS Teams in an Event disables the option to enroll by groups, to avoid compatibility issues.
How to activate the integration of an Event with MS Teams
Creating such a meeting in Teams for the Event is done quickly and easily. When creating a Training with the New training button, in the Training details tab you simply have to activate the Microsoft Teams flag located at the bottom.
Activating the Microsoft Teams flag disables the Virtual room field, since the meeting created automatically will be where the Event will take place.
In fact, if you go back to the Training details, you will see that a URL is shown in this field, the one of the meeting itself, which you can select and copy.
You can also edit a Training already created, clicking on the three dots on the left and selecting the Edit option. This opens the Training details where you can enable or disable the integration with Teams.
Beware, when you activate the integration in a Training already created, if you had entered a URL in the Virtual room field, it will be deleted and automatically replaced by the URL of the meeting. This action can't be undone, so you will not be able to recover the previous URL.
Also, if you deactivate the integration, the URL of the meeting previously created will be automatically deleted and you will not be able to recover it. If you activate the integration again, a new meeting (URL) will be created.
Joining an Event integrated with MS Teams
As mentioned above, activating the integration of an Event with Teams creates a meeting through this application, in which all those enrolled in the Training will be included. The application itself automatically sends an email notification of the meeting to all users, to the email address with which they are registered in LMS. The email includes the URL of the meeting, and the From field will be the name of the user who created the meeting in LMS. The meeting name will be the title of the Event Content.
Users will receive the email from Teams at the moment you register them in the Training, together with the Event notification email from the LMS.
Once the Event arrives, the student has two ways to access the video call. Externally, by clicking on the link they received in the Teams meeting notification email. Or log in to the Learner Portal and look for the Events carousel on the main page. Clicking on the Event thumbnail shows the pop-up window with the Join to the Event button to access the Teams link.
If the student's email account belongs to Microsoft, the Event is added to his Outlook calendar when accepting the meeting invitation. He will also be able to accesss the meeting from there.
If the student uses another webmail service, he can also add the Event to his calendar through an ICS file. Check this article to find out how.
A new window will open to follow the meeting. If the user has the MS Teams application installed on his computer, the browser will give him the option to open the meeting directly in it.
In Learner Portal, once the Event is closed it will move on to the Learning Records, and although the student can access the pop-up window again to view the information and attachments, the button to enter the meeting is no longer available. He can only re-access through the link in the invitation email or his webmail calendar.
Synchronizing the Attendance record with MS Teams
As seen in the article about following an Event, the assigned Trainers can keep track of the Attendance of the students in the Training itself. So far this record was done manually, the Trainer marked the Attendance or Absence, and entered the duration in minutes. With the new integration this synchronisation is done automatically, one hour after the end of the event LMS makes a call to the MS Teams application to get all that data and show it in the list. In addition, there's a button at the top called Synchronise with MS Teams, clicking on it you can make a new query to Teams. This attendance data can be edited manually as many times as you want.
The synchronization of Attendance with Teams is done at the moment, not continuously, that is, the data is recorded at that precise moment and the system does not keep a trace afterwards.
When synchronizing, LMS uses the email addresses with which the students are logged into the Teams meeting. Attendance is registered for those that match the email addresses that users have associated with their Learner Portal account. Which means, if a user enters the meeting with a different email, or simply as a Guest (without email) the platform will not be able to recognize him and his Attendance will not be registered. In this case the Trainer will have to enter it manually.
In order for LMS to synchronize and receive the user's attendance data, the option Identify me in attendance reports must be enabled in the application settings (Teams Options → Settings → Privacy).
This option is enabled by default. In case it is not possible to synchronize with a specific user, check if he has this option disabled in his application.
Summoning external users
As you can see in other articles, in order to use MS Teams in your LMS platform it is necessary to first activate the integration in the portal Settings, and enter the Microsoft client data withy our company server. By doing this, all users whose email account belongs to that server are considered as internal, and those who have a different server (including @outlook.com, @google.com...) will be external.
This is important as it affects the integration of MS Teams with Events. If a summoned user is registered with an external email account (different server):
- He will not be able to directly access the video call, he will have to wait to be authorized by someone internal.
- It will not be possible to synchronize his attendance data. Due to Microsoft's privacy policy, LMS cannot obtain data from external users.