Integrating SEQTA with MS Teams

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• How the integration works
• Important notes
• Users and Permissions
  • Administrator
  • Teacher
  • Student

You can integrate SEQTA with Microsoft Teams (MS Teams) to create teams where teachers and students can interact and learn online. This document describes how the integration is set up and how to navigate the functionality available.

Note: 'MS Teams' refers to the product and is in uppercase. Lowercase 'teams' refers to the individual communication entities you can create inside the product.

How the integration works

The MS Teams integration is comprised of three parts – the integration between SEQTA and MS Teams, a synchronisation to ensure students enrolled in a SEQTA class remains aligned with the membership of a MS Teams team, and a deep link to allow teachers and students to launch into their class’s teams channel from their timetable or after taking attendance (teachers only). 

The integration is a connection between MS Teams and SEQTA, based on the school's unique Microsoft tenancy. Once the integration is in place, students in a MS Teams enabled class will automatically be added or removed from the team if their enrolment in SEQTA is adjusted. This all happens automatically, once a class has been set up as MS Teams enabled in SEQTA. Teachers and students will have an MS Teams icon visible to them for classes in their timetable. Clicking this icon will launch the correct team in the MS Teams platform. Teachers also have this functionality available in the enabled classes' Attendance Roll in SEQTA.

Important notes

Creating a team creates an online space in which teachers and students can communicate, teach and learn together. Safety measures have been put in place to help keep this online space safe. These measures will affect which classes can be enabled for MS Teams and are listed below:

• A class must have at least one teacher at all times. This person is responsible for the monitoring of the content of the online space. If a class does not have a teacher associated with it, the class team will be disabled and become read-only for all members.
• Teachers and students must have a school-sanctioned email address of the same domain as that listed in the Application Settings of the MS Teams integration. Personal email addresses are not acceptable to gain access to the team.
• Data travels from SEQTA to MS Teams, but not back to SEQTA. It is therefore important to keep SEQTA as the source of truth regarding class enrolment. 
• Teams are created as Private. This means that only the owner can add new members to the team. If a member wants to add another member to the team, a request is created to the owner (as an email and as a teams pending request) for approval. However, this request (or approval) do not sync back with SEQTA. New members (students) are best enrolled in SEQTA, and the class reset (disabled and enabled again) to keep SEQTA and MS Teams aligned.
• If a member leaves the team, they cannot be added back by the owner directly. The class integration will need to be reset in SEQTA (disabled and enabled again) to add the member again.

Users and Permissions

The intended users of the SEQTA-MS Teams integration are:

• Administrator
• Teacher
• Student

It should be understood that these user roles could be shared by some individuals, depending on the circumstances at the individual school.

Administrator

An Administrator is the person responsible for the setup and maintenance of the MS Teams integration within SEQTA. They hold the highest permissions with regards to the integration between MS Teams and SEQTA and have the most functionality available to them. These permissions are needed to set up the integration and manage the enabling and disabling of classes for the integration. These roles are:

• STC (SEQTA Technical Contact)
• SEC (SEQTA Educational Contact)

Teacher

A Teacher is responsible for owning and monitoring the online team space that is created through this integration. They have some permissions and are able to enrol/unenroll students from their classes in SEQTA, as well as determine if their classes are enabled for the MS Teams integration. They are the owner of the team created for a class, and they have more permissions within MS Teams than other members of the team. This allows them to control membership and some resource management. Teachers will have access to the teams as soon as they are enabled in SEQTA. The roles needed within SEQTA are:

• An email address stored in SEQTA with the same domain as that of the integration (see Integration Setup)

Student

A student is the person added to the online team. They are created as a member of the team when enrolled in an MS Teams enabled class. They have limited permissions within the team. They are able to leave a team, and must request the addition of any additional members as they are not able to add them directly. Students must have:

• An email address stored in SEQTA with the same domain as that of the integration (see Integration Setup)
• Be enrolled in a timetabled class in SEQTA. They will be able to access the team from the time of their enrolment, until the time of their unenrolment, regardless of the scheduled time of the class. This is to allow students to access pre-learning material prior to lessons, and to access learning resources after class during homework sessions

Related articles:

• SEQTA MS-Teams Integration Setup (Administrator only)
• SEQTA MS-Teams Troubleshooting