Parent Observer - Zoom tab access

[MirandaDilbert]

Hi Canvas community,

I have a question about Parent Observer accounts as a Canvas admin.  We have the Zoom tab visible on the side navigation for all of our courses.  We also have a homepage that links teachers/students to the Zoom tab.  How do I remove the Zoom tab accessibility for Parent Observers so they cannot join Zoom classes?  Screenshots of how to edit are very much appreciated.

[chriscas]

Hi @MirandaDilbert,

Unfortunately, I don't think there is a way to limit access to observers on the Canvas side of things.  There are 3 basic options administrators can set for visibility of external tools: public (everyone), members (everyone enrolled in the course, including observers), and admins (just administrators and teacher role).  The admins setting would remove it from observers, but also from students, which is not what you want.  There may be a setting on the Zoom administrative side to configure what it does with roles, but I'm not the Zoom admin for my campus so I can't say for sure what options may be available there.

-Chris

[JeffW · Accepted solution]

Hi @MirandaDilbert,

From what I know, the parameters that Zoom looks for (things like the user's role in the course) is set by the developer (Zoom). This is something that they might be able to adjust for your particular installation. Something else to consider would be limiting participants to authenticated users. I have seen this option in Zoom settings, though I do not know for sure if it's in all instances of Zoom. It may depend on your subscription tier. This would prevent users who are not logged in through an account in your domain from joining the meeting.

[MirandaDilbert]

Hi @JeffW and @chriscas ,

Thank you for your responses.  I will work with our Zoom rep to see what those parameters are and how we can get the Zoom link to work only for certain Canvas user roles.