Zoom Calendar Notifications Issue

[morgan_j]

We recently installed the Zoom Pro LTI on our Canvas production system.  

We have received some emails from faculty asking about a way to turn off the email notifications currently going to students before the beginning of the semester from Zoom events populating the Canvas Calendar.  Normally these items on the calendar do not send email notifications until the course begins.

I have reviewed the Zoom Developer Key settings and am not sure which option to disable, or if I even should disable any of the options?  Is this where we can remove calendar notification from zoom?

Thanks!

[tdionne]

This might be a good suggestion to add to the Roadmap/Idea Conversations. I don't see any other suggestion like yours. I think many of us have wish for this option (especially those who forget to change the date of the meeting from the default). 

Although, in my experience, when the Canvas course is not published as the time the Zoom meetings are created, students do not receive email notifications (which seems to function in the same manner as announcements - when created before the course is published no notification is pushed to email).

Trish

[morgan_j]

Thanks.  Follow your suggestion and created a new idea for this.

Jeff

[Awalk]

Has anyone found a solution to this?  I love the calendar feature because it helps students clearly see when assignments are due, but now that I am running 4 daily zoom meetings in the course for different sections, All student calendars are being buried in a list of needless meeting reminders.

[kkeller03]

Agree - I don't want the Zoom meeting to be listed on the calendar!  It just becomes another thing listed!

[emily_smith2]

I don't mind it being listed in the calendar, actually I find that quite useful but the email notifications are confusing to students, especially if you want them to use the self sign up feature instead of just turning up to the zoom session as they have been emailed the link. 

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

Hello everyone!  ( @morgan_j , @emily_smith2 , @kkeller03 , @Awalk , and @tdionne )...

As a Canvas administrator at our Technical College, I've had a bit of experience setting up the Zoom Pro LTI in our school's Canvas environment.  It sounds like you also have your Zoom integration set up within Canvas so that when Zoom meetings are set up via the LTI, those meetings are also then added to the instructor and student Calendars in Canvas.  To my knowledge, this is actually a setting that needs to be configured by the person at your school who set up and maintains the Zoom account/configuration at your school.  There is a screen of additional configuration options that this Zoom admin would have access to that is not a part of their Zoom admin screens when signing in to their account via Zoom.us.  Your Canvas/Zoom administrator would need to:

1. Navigate to: App Marketplace - Zoom LTI Pro
2. Sign in to the site via the "Sign In" link at the top right corner of the page.
3. Once logged in, click on the "Manage" tab.
4. Next to "Configuration", click on the "Configure" button.
5. The Canvas/Zoom admin will be taken to a screen that shows the version number, the LTI Key, and Owner.  Click on the "Edit" button.
6. On the next screen, there will be several options...many of which are toggle switches to turn on/off.  Scroll about half-way down on this page: LTI Pro for Canvas - LMS Guides - LTI Pro to the section on "Canvas Calendar and Conversations".  This is the information that is needed to set up Zoom to automatically post new meetings to the Canvas Calendar and to also automatically send out notifications via the Canvas Inbox to students in the course.

Keep in mind that the Calendar and Conversations settings described here are for the entire Canvas account.  To my knowledge, they cannot be turned on/off per course.  It's all or nothing.  So, if some people liked having this feature at your school and you turned it off, it would be off for everyone...so you'd want to consider that in any decisions that were made.

I hope this will be of some help to everyone.  Please let Community members know if there are any other questions...thanks!  Take care, stay safe, and be well.

[morgan_j]

@Chris_Hofer Thank you SO much for posting this solution.   We continued to get negative feedback from instructors and students on the amount of email notification they were receiving, so I followed your instructions and it worked.  We just applied this solution within our institution this week, and folks seem to be happier now.  As you stated, this is an all or nothing solution, but we made the decision to move forward with turning it off.

Thanks!

[Chris_Hofer]

Not a problem, @morgan_j!  Glad it worked for your needs!

[mtomlinson1]

Thank you so much for this solution!  By chance, does anyone know if by doing this we are also disabling Zoom from posting meeting links on student Canvas Calendars?  I'm hesitant to turn ours off because teachers and students really like having meeting links on their calendar.

Thanks again!

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello @mtomlinson1 ...

In my directions I've posted above, within step #6 there are really two different toggles...one to to turn on/off Canvas notifications to be delivered via the Canvas Inbox (for when Zoom meetings are created/edited/deleted and when recordings are available), and another toggle for the Canvas Calendar.  If you turn either of these on/off, it will affect all courses wherever you have the Zoom LTI app installed in Canvas.  So, for us, we have the Zoom LTI installed at our root account level, so it affects all courses.  There is no option for us to turn either of these options on/off at the course level.  They are all-or-nothing settings.  Does this help to clarify things?

[Nancy_Webb_CCSF]

Hi @morgan_j, perhaps this issue has been fixed. I tested, and students did not receive new zoom meeting notifications when the course hadn't opened, even if they were not restricted from viewing the course beforehand. The course was published. Note we do have dates on our courses, perhaps yours do not?  It should default to term dates if specific dates aren't set, and maybe if term dates aren't set the course would be considered open as soon as published.

They also don't receive a notification if a zoom meeting is disassociated from the course.