Integration for Office365/Teams in Non-Credit Instance: No Institutional Licensing for Teams for Students

[MelissaSmiley1]

Greetings friends! 

I am the new LMS admin for a new program and we are focused on non-credit, credentialling courses geared towards working professionals. Our institution is not able to award Microsoft licenses as these are external users in short courses. 

I cannot find a clear answer, but I'm planning on integrating Office365 at our root instance level in order to alleviate the manual process of getting our users into external-tool usage of Teams for synchronous meetings and sessions. I'm hoping this integration creates a more automated and seamless process for our program coordinator and end-users. 

Can anyone confirm that our end-users, once registered in Canvas, will be able to attend synchronous sessions without being manually added to the tool, or have no issues with access to the synchronous sessions (when created by a "teacher" or higher)? 

thank you kindly in advance. 

[Jeff_F · Accepted solution]

Hello @MelissaSmiley1 - as I didn't know the answer offhand, I asked Microsoft Copilot AI to research and provide a solution. Here are the results. I hope this is useful!  

Also, I highly encourage testing this out on the Canvas test server. With GenAI I tend to distrust and verify. 😁

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Based on the latest information from Microsoft and Canvas communities, here’s a breakdown of what you need to know regarding Microsoft Teams integration with Canvas, especially for non-credit, external users:

🔑 Microsoft 365 Licensing Requirements for Teams Access

1. Meeting Participation (Join Only):

   • External users do not need a Microsoft 365 license to join a Microsoft Teams meeting. They can access the meeting via a browser or the Teams app as a guest.
   • This means your non-credit students can attend synchronous sessions created in Teams without needing to be licensed by your institution [1].

2. Meeting Creation and Hosting:

   • Only users with a valid Microsoft 365 license (typically A1, A3, or A5 for Education) can create and host Teams meetings.
   • These users (e.g., instructors or program coordinators) must be licensed and authenticated through your institution’s Microsoft 365 tenant [2].

3. Canvas Integration via LTI:

   • The Microsoft Teams Meetings LTI app allows instructors to schedule and manage Teams meetings directly within Canvas.
   • You can choose to enable the LTI tool for students or keep it hidden. If enabled, students can see and join meetings from within Canvas [3].

4. Automated Access:

   • While the LTI integration simplifies scheduling and joining meetings, it does not automatically provision Teams accounts for students.
   • However, since your users only need to join meetings, this limitation should not impact your use case.

✅ Recommendations for Your Use Case

• Enable the Microsoft Teams Meetings LTI at the root level in Canvas.
• Ensure instructors or staff who create meetings have valid Microsoft 365 licenses.
• Communicate to students that they can join meetings as guests without needing a Microsoft account.
• Consider disabling the “Teams Classes” LTI if you don’t need full class team provisioning, which requires licensed users.

Would you like help drafting a setup guide or communication template for your instructors and students?

References

[1] Learning Management Systems (LMS) Integrations - Microsoft Support

[2] FAQs - Instructure Community

[3] Setting up the Microsoft Teams integration - Instructure Community