If you are configuring your Microsoft Teams to have an EchoVideo app, you will have noticed (either in the EchoVideo interface or in the instructions) a toggle in the Teams configuration block in the LMS Configurations page. This is shown in the figure below.

This option becomes available only after you have entered values into the fields and selected Create Configuration. Furthermore, it only applies to MS Teams integrations. 

This article explains why it exists and what it enables (or prohibits) when activated.

The toggle and the explanations below apply to using the EchoVideo App in MS Teams as a Tab in a Team Channel. The global Pinned EchoVideo app in the left navigation is strictly to the user's EchoVideo Media Library and is not relevant to this toggle or to the explanations below.

The Brief Explanation

The toggle exists to prevent role escalation for students. While MS Teams has various user policies that can be configured, the bottom line is that some institutions allow students to create Teams, which makes them the Team owner.

EchoVideo treats a Team Owner as the team's instructor. If the student has access to the EchoVideo App through a tab in their Team, they will be directed to EchoVideo as an instructor. This will allow them to either map the Team to an existing section or to auto-create a new EchoVideo section (if Simplified Provisioning is turned on). In this case, that Student user will now also have the Instructor role on their user account. The Longer Explanation section below explains why this may be a problem.

This role escalation can be avoided by the Teams administrator through proper user and app setup policies in MS Teams. Do not allow student Teams owners to access the EchoVideo App in their Teams tabs. If your students are unable to create Teams or be assigned as Team Owners, this should not be a problem.

However, EchoVideo aims to provide a failsafe in the event that a user finds themselves in a situation where this is possible.

Essentially, what this toggle does is ensure that

• If the user exists in EchoVideo, and
• Does not already have the Instructor role assigned to their account, then
• Their pass-through from the Teams Tab to Echo as a Team Owner will not automatically grant them the Instructor role.

The downside is that if it is turned on, Instructors who are Teams owners and add an EchoVideo tab to their Teams channels cannot be automatically created in EchoVideo. The EchoVideo Admin will need to ensure those Instructors are added to EchoVideo separately before attempting to link them.

If your MS Teams setup is configured so that Students who create Teams cannot access the EchoVideo App for new tabs in Team channels, you can turn this toggle off. 

If your MS Teams / EchoVideo setup is such that you expect EchoVideo to create new Instructor users on pass-through, and enroll / allow them to select EchoVideo course linking (or have the EchoVideo course created for them) then you must turn this toggle off.

Having the toggle on assumes that new Instructor users are added to EchoVideo separately through EchoVideo. Students are still created on pass-through (if they do not already exist). All new users are assumed to be Students when they pass through.

The Longer Explanation

Currently in EchoVideo, users are assigned one or more roles. Typically, these roles control what the user can or cannot do within an EchoVideo course. Instructors can control nearly all aspects of their courses, including adding and removing media, changing course features, and viewing student viewing analytics for the course and its media. Teaching Assistants can do everything an instructor can, except remove media or classes, and view student viewing analytics. Students can view the media, take notes, and participate in Q&A and discussions.

The media library, however, is generally speaking role-agnostic. It doesn't matter what your role in a course is; if you have the media in your library, you have more control over it. Students, of course, cannot publish media to a course; only instructors and teaching assistants can. But they can access the Media Details page for media in their library, which provides additional functionality and information.

Users get media in their library in a couple of ways:

• They add the media themselves through uploads or other methods of creating that content.
• Make a copy of the course media if the feature is turned on for the course.
• Another user shares the media with them; they do not own it, but they can access it outside a course and view the media details page.

Sharing media in EchoVideo lets people access it without creating a whole new copy. Shared media includes both the media and all ancillary details about the media. 

Administrators can use some Institutional Feature settings to explicitly turn off certain features for Students. Things like the ability to create public URL links to media, or the ability to edit Transcripts for media, or the ability to create Groups, or even the ability to have a Library in the first place.

If a user only has the Student role in EchoVideo, they are subject to these restrictions if the administrator has configured them.

If, however, a Student has the Instructor role added to their account, they now have access to all restricted features for Students. This includes the ability to view student viewing analytics on the media details page.

The Analytics tab of the Media Details page is only visible to Instructors in EchoVideo - users with an Instructor role. If a piece of media has been shared with the Student and Instructor, those users can now see who viewed it, where, and for how long.

What this ultimately means is that EchoVideo wants to avoid a situation where a student gets an instructor role inadvertently, by using the EchoVideo Teams app in a tab to pass into EchoVideo.