For a meeting created using the Teams integration within the Learning solution, what does the Administrator need to do to record/confirm attendance?
If the setup guides are followed correctly:
[1] Set Up Your Microsoft Azure Account for Use With Microsoft Teams
[2] Connect Your Academy with Your Microsoft Teams for Business Account
[3] Connect Your Personal Profile with Your Microsoft Teams for Business Account
then the Learning solution will automatically sync the attendance data of the learners, usually up to 15 minutes (sometimes a little longer) after the end of the Teams meeting.
Note:
Either the academy connection [2] or the user's personal connection [3] can be used when initiating an MS Teams meeting
The user who has initiated the event must not deactivate their MS Teams connection in the Learning solution. This ensures proper recording of the attendance data. It is also important to end the online Teams meeting on time or before it is scheduled to end in the Learning solution to avoid syncing problems.
When the attendance data is synced, the users may receive event certificates and credits, and increase their completion percentage for any connected courses or curricula/learning paths.
How do we verify the time and attendance data the system has recorded in the Learning solution?
An Academy Administrator or a member with permission to manage the specific event can navigate to the Event Registrants page of the event and check the attendance time for each learner.
Note:
Wait for at least 15 minutes after the end of the event to do this.
What happens if someone joins the meeting who wasn’t registered, joins from their phone instead of through their work laptop/account, or a group of people join the class in a conference room and only one person signs in?
- Learners joining as guests (that is, not registered to the event via the Learning solution): 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 the Learning solution. This functionality is managed entirely on the Teams side. All users are evaluated based on their permissions within Teams rather than their permissions in the Learning solution.
- Learners joining 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) as long as they use a Teams account with the same e-mail as the one they use in the Learning solution. If they join by logging in to Teams using a phone or PC with an email account not connecting them with their Learning solution account, their attendance data will not be synced, since the Learning solution doesn't know it is them.
- A group of learners joining the class with only one person signing in: The system is designed to automatically allow into Teams meetings only those with the emails of Learning solution users who are registered for the meeting in the Learning solution. 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 meeting organizer sets their Teams app 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 .csv attendance file that Teams generates?
- Custom meeting URLs are not supported. Meetings can only be created from within the Learning solution and all meeting URLs are created by the Learning solution.
- Bulk upload is supported in the Event Registrants page. There is an option to bulk upload an Excel file (for which we provide downloadable templates) 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 attendee need to do anything besides select the Join Meeting button?
No. An attendee can join the meeting using either the link on the Event Page in the Learning solution, or the link they receive via email. This email is sent from Microsoft and 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 the Learning solution, 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 (user4) is added from the Learning solution, the synced list will update to user1, user2, user3, and user4, which may overwrite the updated list in Teams and remove externaluser1.