What is Microsoft Teams?

Microsoft Teams is a tool for online virtual conferencing. It can be leveraged for small instructor led training (less than 300 learners) with a Microsoft 365 Business Basic or higher plan and even more by setting up a Microsoft Teams Live webinar.

Teams allows a presenter to converse with participants over video, live audio, and chat, as well as sharing their screen or specific documents.

What is the Microsoft Teams integration?

With Administrate's integration, a training administrator can add a Teams meeting to a scheduled event automatically and make the joining link available to all instructors and registered Learners. 

Configuring the Integration

Setting up the integration requires assistance from our support team. The steps below can be completed in the Microsoft Azure Control Panel to retrieve the necessary credentials:

1. Log in to Microsoft Azure  and go to the Active Directory » Registered Apps blade
2. Click on “New Registration” and fill in the details and choose Single Tenant as your account type, with no redirect URI.
3. Click on Certificates & Secrets for your newly created App and create a new Client Secret that never expires (Make sure to take note of your secret key).
   1. Update: Microsoft Azure has removed the 'never expires' option when generating a new Client Secret, so we recommend selecting the longest duration available.
4. Add permissions:
   
   1. Calendars.ReadWrite type Application
   2. User.Read.All type Delegated
   3. Users.Read type Delegated
   4. User.Read.All type Application
   5. OnlineMeetings.ReadWrite.All Application
5. Take note of the Client ID, and Tenant ID for the app

The Client ID, Client Secret, and Tenant ID are what are needed by our team to complete the setup.

Setting up an Event with Teams

When creating a new event or updating an existing one, you'll be able to specify Microsoft Teams as a Virtual Classroom:

A meeting will not be created until after a Primary Instructor is associated with the event - you'll see a notice if this assignment has not yet occurred.

Updating the Teams Meeting

Many updates, including reassigning instructors and cancelling events will automatically update the associated Microsoft Teams meeting. If however, you need to force a resync, you can do so under the Add-ons menu:

Sharing Joining Information with Learners

LMS

Learners will be able to see a "Join Online Training" link to the meeting within the LMS. An example of this is shown below:

Letting Learners Know via Email

You can also choose to inform learners via email using a communication template.

Create a Communication Template

1. First create a communication template by following this guide.
2. Click on the “Add Merge Field” button in the editor toolbar and select Event->Remote Meeting URL
3. Add other fields to build out your template. For example, the title of the event or the start and end times. See Templates for more details.

Sharing Joining Information with the Instructor

Outlook

When a Teams meeting is scheduled, it will show up on all assigned Instructors' calendars and invite them to the meeting automatically:

Create a Communication Template

Similar to the instructions above for Students, you can also setup communications to send to Instructors.

FAQs 

How does the integration choose who is the meeting presenter?

The MS Teams integration creates a video meeting by having a Microsoft User create the meeting on their Microsoft Teams calendar, and inviting the instructors to it. By default, this Microsoft User is the Primary Instructor of the Administrate Event.

This behavior can be overridden by setting a “service_user_id” or “service_user_email” parameter on the config of the webhook.

How does the integration match instructor accounts between Microsoft and Administrate?

The integration looks up the instructor as a user within your Microsoft organization by their email address, using what is stored on their Instructor record within Administrate.

How do events appear on the calendar?

Currently, the meeting presenter will have a single event created on their calendar for the duration of the first Session on the Event in Administrate. A single Teams meeting joining link is tied to the calendar Event. Calendar invites for all Sessions can be attached to a Communication Template that the target audience clicks on to add all Sessions to their calendar.