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 aims to explain why it exists and what it enables (or prohibits) when activated.

The toggle and the below explanations 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 sees a Team Owner as the instructor for that team. 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 auto-create a new EchoVideo section for them (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 provides details as to why this may be a problem.

This role escalation can be avoided with proper user and app setup policies in MS Teams by the Teams administrator. Basically, don't allow student Teams owners to have access to the EchoVideo App for their Teams tabs. If your students are unable to create Teams or are unable to be assigned as Team Owners, then 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 into Echo from the Teams Tab as a Team Owner will not automatically give them the Instructor role.

The downside of this is that if it is turned on, Instructors who are Teams owners and who 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 into EchoVideo separately before trying to link through.

If your MS Teams setup is such that Students who create Teams cannot access the EchoVideo App for new tabs in the 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). And all new users are assumed to be Students when they do 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 classes and media in the course. Teaching Assistants can do all the things an instructor can do except for removing media or classes, and seeing 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 do that. But they have access to the Media Details page for the media in their library, which contains additional functionality and information.

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

• They add the media themselves through uploads or other method of creating that content.
• The make a copy of course media, if that feature is turned on for a course.
• Another user shares the media with them; they don't own the media but they have access to it outside of a course and can see the media details page.

Sharing media in EchoVideo is a way for people to have access to something without having to create a whole new copy of it. Shared media shares both the media and all of the ancillary details about the media. 

Administrators can use some of the Institutional Feature settings to turn off certain features for Students explicitly. 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 gets the Instructor role added to their account, they now have access to all of those things that were restricted for Students. This includes the ability to see the student viewing analytics in a 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, that user can now see who has viewed that media and from 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.