Admin - Taking attendance – If we use the Teams Integration (system creates the Teams meeting) what does our Admin need to do to record/confirm attendance?
There is nothing that needs to be done. If the setup guides are followed correctly...
[1] Setting Up Your Microsoft Azure Account (Needed for Microsoft Teams)
[2] Connecting Your Academy with Your Microsoft Teams for Business Account
[3] Connecting Your Personal Schoox Profile with Your Microsoft Teams for Business Account
...then Schoox will automatically sync the Attendance Data of the Users, usually up to 15 minutes (sometimes a little longer) after the end of the Teams Meeting.
Please note that, for initiating an MS Teams Meeting, either [2] the academy connection or [3] the user's personal connection can be used.
In turn, when the attendance data has been synced, the users may receive event certificates and credits, and increase their completion percentage for any connected courses or curricula/learning paths.
If there is one thing to be done for properly recording the attendance data, it would be for the user who has initiated the event to not disable their MS Teams connection in Schoox. Also, it is important to make sure to end the online Teams Meeting on or before the time that it is scheduled to end in Schoox to avoid syncing problems.
How do we QC what the system as pulled over?
An Academy Admin or a user with permission to manage the specific event can navigate to the Event Registrants page of the event and check the attendance time for each user.
It is advisable to wait for at least 15 minutes after the end of the event to do this.
How will the system handle it if someone joins the meeting who wasn’t registered, or they join from their phone instead of the through their work laptop/account, or a group of people joined the class in a conference room and only one person signs in?
- For Users who are joining as guests (are not registered to the event via Schoox): The meeting host will receive an in-app notification in Teams to allow this user in or not. This can happen only while the meeting is in progress. Regardless of the action, the attendance data of this user cannot be synced in Schoox.
- Join from phone: It doesn't matter if a user joins via a smartphone or tablet (browser or Teams app) or via a PC (browser or Teams app). All that matters is that they use a Teams account with the same e-mail as the one they use in Schoox. If they join by logging in to Teams using a phone or PC with an email account not connecting them with their Schoox account, their attendance data will not be synced, since Schoox doesn't know it is them.
- In the case of a group of individuals joining the class with only one person signing in: Right now, the system is designed to automatically allow into Teams meetings only those with the emails of the Schoox users who are registered in the Meeting in Schoox. All other users are considered Guests and will require the explicit permission of the meeting host to join while the meeting is in progress (unless the settings of the Teams app of the meeting organizer has set it up to bypass this setting).
If we choose to use our own meeting URL, rather than letting the system create the meeting, how can we record attendance? Is there an option to bulk upload a the .csv attendance file that Teams generates?
- Custom meeting URLs: You cannot do that. Meetings can only be created from within Schoox; all Meeting URLs are created by Schoox.
- Bulk upload: In the Event Registrants page, yes, there is the option to bulk upload an Excel file (for which we provide downloadable templates), in order to adjust the attendance time of each user. This should be used in very rare cases; only when attendance data has not been synced (while not quite possible, it may technically happen in rare-case scenarios).
Once the event is live, does the user need to do anything besides click a Join Meeting button? Anything we can show here?
Not really. They can click on the link which they can access on the Event Page in Schoox, or the link they have received via email. It's the same one.
Also, this email is sent from Microsoft, so the email is not customizable.
Is it possible to customize the invitations to reflect the preferred time zone of the team member or instructor?
We intentionally use UTC format for event creation when scheduling online meetings via the Microsoft Graph API. In this process, the startDateTime and endDateTime are set in UTC format. However, Microsoft Teams will automatically adjust these times to reflect the time zone configured for each user. As a result, attendees will see the meeting time according to their personal time zone settings, which are typically based on their system preferences or settings within Teams. While the meeting is created in UTC, it will be displayed in each user’s local time zone in the Teams interface.
Invitations display participants as 'Optional'. Does this behavior relate to the settings required for course completion, or is it an issue specific to Teams?
When creating an online meeting in Microsoft Teams via the POST /users/{userId}/onlineMeetings endpoint, all attendees are set as optional by default, as per Microsoft’s design.
Is it possible to invite external speakers to participate in a virtual training session?
External speakers can be added directly through Microsoft Teams, which is outside of our direct integration. However, when adjustments are made to the roster in Schoox, we sync the user list without considering any new participants added via Teams. For example, if the original roster includes user1, user2, and user3, and an external speaker (externaluser1) is added through Teams, the Teams list would then include user1, user2, user3, and externaluser1. Our system, however, will still retain the original roster. When a new user (e.g., user4) is added from Schoox, the synced list will update to user1, user2, user3, and user4, which may overwrite the updated list in Teams and remove externaluser1.