Question

Joining an MS Teams Meeting as an instructor

  • 12 January 2022
  • 34 replies
  • 937 views

Userlevel 7
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Hi,

We have MS Teams working with Docebo, however, right now all participants, including instructors are joining as “learners”.

In the documentation about MS Teams integration, there is a bullet in the Important Notes section at the end, which I’m having a hard time to understand:

In order for a Docebo user to join a webinar as an instructor in Microsoft Teams, the account must be paired to an individual account in Azure. The Instructor of the session will be defined by the Azure-based Microsoft Teams account and the Microsoft Teams account created in Docebo will be used to launch the session.

Can someone please explain this in plain English?

What are the steps to have a person who is a course instructor join the Teams webinar or event with the right privileges?


34 replies

Userlevel 7
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Hey @alekwo I believe this means that your IT team needs to create an account for this instructor on your Azure server in order to be recognized with Instructor privileges. This is not the first I hear of this and it seems overly complicated but that’s Microsoft...lol

Userlevel 7
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Thanks @lrnlab

This makes sense, still, I have no idea how to proceed, when an instructor has an account in our MS domain, how do I pair the Docebo account with the Azure/MS account - the account must be paired to an individual account in Azure?

Userlevel 7
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@alekwo not quite sure but you should probably connect with your IT dept for assistance. I think (and please don't quote me) that they need to create a “group” for your Instructors to give them certain permissions that would allow them to be and ‘admin’ and that would grant them the necessary access for Teams.

Userlevel 7
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Thanks, I opened a support ticket to get this clarified in detail.

Userlevel 1

Hi -

 

@alekwo have you had any resolution to this?

Userlevel 7
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@alekwo did you see the post where Docebo states this resolved? it looks like you need to uninstall the app and reinstall it for things to work properly and without needing to add your instructors to Azure.

See the bottom of the page where is cites a Feb 2022 update

https://help.docebo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360020079600-Docebo-for-Microsoft-Teams

Userlevel 3
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This is very helpful! We have tried to get this to work and it looks like we are at least closer to getting it right. 

Userlevel 3

I’ve been battling the MS Teams integration for about 3 weeks now (also the Zoom integration, but those details are in another thread.) Here’s what I have learned - the documentation Docebo provides leaves a gaping hole in the details: you have to build the integration for each user who will serve as an instructor, separately. That is, if you have 10 people who’ll serve as instructors, you must build the integration 10 times separately in both Azure and Docebo.  In my case, I built the integration once and one of my users set up events and made himself the instructor, but they kept getting scheduled in my calendar.  Docebo support initially told me to simply make the user an “owner” of the app in Azure. I did this, and it didn’t make a difference.

Then they told me to revoke permissions and create a new client secret on the Azure side, input the new secret on the Docebo side, and re-pair. After doing this, the problem remained. 

Next they told me to set the API Permissions in Azure...I had already done that exactly as the documentation instructed.

They also told me I had to make the user’s calendar editable by the entire organization within the user’s Outlook settings.  Yes, they actually told me to do that! Um, no. Not gonna do that. The user’s calendar is not public, and we don’t need to let 400+ users be able to edit it directly.  Plus, there’s no way that could be right because events were getting added to my own calendar, and I haven’t granted such permissions to the organization on my own calendar.

But at the end of that email they told me to recreate the client secret again, put the new secret in the integration configuration in Docebo, and then save. Then, to tell the user to go log into Docebo, go to the integration settings for Teams and click the Pair button. This solved the problem. The user had to click the Pair button from inside their own account.  After doing this, when the user created an event for which they are the instructor, it popped up on their calendar - it got assigned to them as instructor! 

So it seems that for every potential instructor I have, I will have to build out the integration, name it according to the instructor’s name on both the Azure and the Docebo side, and then instruct the instructor to go to the admin settings, to the teams integration, and to click the Pair button beside the integration that has their name on it. 

I really really don’t like giving such wide-ranging admin access as this. It’s concerning that Docebo considers this an acceptable workflow for making the integration work as it should - both from the administrator side that I’m on, and on the user side that the instructors are on...I’m essentially going to have to grant instructors super admin privileges so that they can go in and pair the integration that applies to them. This is something I should be able to do as admin so that for the instructors, it “just works.”  They shouldn’t have to dive into the admin settings like this.  

It’s also concerning that Docebo’s tech support doesn’t seem prepared to solve these problems...much of what the support agent has given me has been snippets from this community, instead of actual documentation on how to solve the problem. 

Userlevel 3
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Ahhhh - well that won’t work for us either. Our instructors are not allowed to create sessions or have rights to the back end. Back to the drawing board.

 

Userlevel 3

Ahhhh - well that won’t work for us either. Our instructors are not allowed to create sessions or have rights to the back end. Back to the drawing board.

 

You don’t have to make it where instructors can create sessions themselves, so that’s good. One thought for you: you could allow the instructor to be an admin just long enough to go to the integration and click the Pair button, and then immediately revoke their admin rights.  You could even have your IT department work with the instructors one-on-one or over a remote access session, whereby they have the instructor log in to Docebo and then allow the helpdesk agent to take over, doing the pairing step, then sign back out, so that it isn’t possible for the instructor to inadvertently do something they shouldn’t.

Dear fellows ;)

Can anyone of you who sorted this puzzle out, please post the screenshot of the account settings?

I’ve been trying to sort this setup out for 2 months now, and I’m still stuck.

I configured just an account, while I’m aware (after reading your answers) that I need a specific account for any instructor.

Here’s what I did until now: does it make sense or not? 

 

Clint ID, Tenant ID, CLient Secret are got from Azure.

I’m wondering also if the Client ID should be different from any account I need to configure.

Thanks in advance for your precious help ;)

Stefano

Userlevel 3

Correct. For each Office 365 user whom you want to function as an instructor in a MS Teams virtual training session, you have to create a new Client Secret over on the Azure side.  I believe your client ID and tenant ID will stay the same...but you’ll need a new secret.

Also - your additional instructor will have to go into admin on the Docebo side from their account and click the “pair” button after you setup the additional integration.  

Userlevel 7
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We are testing this integration as well, and I agree with @alekwo that the documentation is so confusing. 😥 

Is it possible to have a generic teams account set up and use that as the instructor account?  That is what we are doing with Webex and the instructor is always logged in as the presenter in the conferencing tool.

With the update that happened in February, there still needs to be a separate client secret for each instructor?

 

Userlevel 3

We are testing this integration as well, and I agree with @alekwo that the documentation is so confusing. 😥 

Is it possible to have a generic teams account set up and use that as the instructor account?  That is what we are doing with Webex and the instructor is always logged in as the presenter in the conferencing tool.

With the update that happened in February, there still needs to be a separate client secret for each instructor?

 

Yes - it is possible to use a generic teams account for the instructor.  You kind of lose a lot of the utility of the integration between Teams and Outlook when you do it this way, but it would work.  Everything about it is less convenient for users and opposes best practices. 

  1. You have to train your users to log out of their individual account in Teams, and into the generic instructor account. When finished, they have to log back out of the generic instructor account and back into their own individual account. 
  2. You have to disable multifactor authentication for the shared, generic account (note: PLEASE have MFA turned on for all your Office 365 users!!) which opposes best practices in the area of security.  
  3. You cannot have multiple live instructor sessions setup at the same time - 2 people can’t be logged into the same Teams account, in separate meetings, at the same time.

But in the most basic since, yes, it works. And Docebo support even recommended it to me. 

Userlevel 7
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@CLewis thank you so much for this additional information!

Clewis- your breakdown of how to integrate MS teams for instructors is so very helpful and appreciated.

 

 Now that you have it sorted out and have built the integration for the instructors to allow them to see the calendar on their Teams account… how does it work for a users when they enroll in one of their sessions? Do they also see the meeting on their teams account? Does the instructor have to forward meeting invites to all enrolled users? How do your learners get access to the teams meeting? lol

Userlevel 3

I can’t give an answer to that yet...so far I have only been involved in the setup and testing from the instructor side.  I don’t know what happens on the learner side.  I’ll update here when I have some experience on the learner side.

We setup the integration and pairing was successful.   However, when Learnings hit the button to Join the webinar, the screen flashes briefly and then takes them back to the Learning Overview screen.   The webinar and/or Teams session never launches.    What do we need to update to make it load?

I mean when Learners (not Learnings)

 

Userlevel 3

I mean when Learners (not Learnings)

 

I think that’s going to be a question for Docebo support, unfortunately.

Userlevel 7
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We setup the integration and pairing was successful.   However, when Learnings hit the button to Join the webinar, the screen flashes briefly and then takes them back to the Learning Overview screen.   The webinar and/or Teams session never launches.    What do we need to update to make it load?

@jarvay in our testing, when a learner clicks to join the session, a new window opens and a pop-up prompts the user to decide if they would like to join via the desktop app or web app.  Is there possibly a pop-up blocker that is keeping that new window from opening for your users?

We made sure it was not a pop up blocker (turned off) for both Chrome and Edge.    I created a session and used the Custom Tool to paste in a Teams URL and that works fine.    It just doesn’t work if we are using the new Teams integration.   The pairing is successful.   Users get the calendar invite that states join from Ceridian.    The class shows up.   However, when trying to join it just doesn’t launch.

 

Our Teams integration started working this morning.   We are not sure if there is some sort of time period required for it to populate across the internet or not.    We are glad it is working but not sure why.

 

Userlevel 3
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@CLewis 

I worked with our IT department today and just got teams integration set up.
Some confusing points we struggled with at first in the Docebo documentation.

  • The redirect url needs to be https://yoursitename.docebosaas.com/learn/msteams - when we initially started, we did not have the /learn/msteams
  • The secret in azure, there are 2 strings that get created, one says, something secret, the other says Value. We ended up using the Value string as the secret id did not work
  • API Permissions - these were not all found under OpenID - we ended up searching for them and found them all with the exception of read.user. Under OpenID we gave them permission to everything which I believe took care of the read.user permission.

Between the documentation and the notes above from @CLewis we were able to create 2 accounts and tested that they worked. Had it not been for that post to create new app integrations for each user, we would have been lost!!!!

Thanks so much!!

Userlevel 4

We are struggling with this at the 

Correct. For each Office 365 user whom you want to function as an instructor in a MS Teams virtual training session, you have to create a new Client Secret over on the Azure side.  I believe your client ID and tenant ID will stay the same...but you’ll need a new secret.

Also - your additional instructor will have to go into admin on the Docebo side from their account and click the “pair” button after you setup the additional integration.  

@CLewis thanks for all the great comments. We are really struggling with this at the moment. Can you (or someone) please help me understand the “pair” action by the instructor?

Do I need to make them a Superadmin and have them navigate to someplace to “pair” then put them back to their normal setting (poweruser)? 

If so, where do they go to “pair”?

Thanks

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