See what's new for the latest versions of the Cisco Webex Education Connector. Features and announcements are listed in the order of monthly updates.
For the Webex Education Connector system status, go to: https://status.educonnector.io/.
December 2021
December 27, 2021
Improved office hours experience
In this release, we have redesigned the Office Hours experience for both instructors and students.

Instructor experience
Instructors now have a clearer view of their office hours settings and availability. In the Weekly Hours tab, instructors configure their weekly availability by setting their preferred meeting duration, meeting buffer, date range, time zone, days of availability, and hours of availability.
A Date range selector has been added that allows instructors to define a consecutive period of time for students to book office hours. Only dates within the date range that is indicated will be shown to students when scheduling. This provides the flexibility to restrict future bookings to a term, semester, or other time-defined period.
The time zone selector allows instructors to set their preferred time zone for office hours meetings. This provides clarity and consistency for students when scheduling meetings.
Student experience
We have updated the student view so that a student must first select their instructor before available time slots are displayed, so it is clear which instructor a student is scheduling time with.

Date override in office hours
Instructors are able to modify their availability for a specific date without needing to update their general office hours availability. Instructors can reduce their availability on a date, increase their availability on a date, or mark themselves unavailable for an entire date.
Update time zone in office hours
The default time zone for office hours is based on the time zone in the course where an instructor first enables office hours. If instructors are located in a different time zone than this course, they can update the time zone for all their office hours. This will provide clarity and consistency when students are scheduling time to meet.
August 2021
August 31, 2021
Advanced Scheduling Options
When scheduling a Webex meeting in Virtual Meetings, instructors now can specify the following advanced scheduling options for the meeting:
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Unlocked Meetings—Instructors can control whether or not users outside of the school’s Webex organization can join unlocked meetings. Choose whether guests can join the meeting directly, whether they must wait in the lobby and be admitted by the host, or can't join the meeting.
An admin must turn off the Require Account to Join setting in the Admin Panel to allow instructors to set the unlocked meetings behavior. Enabling Require Account to Join prevents anyone without an account on the school's Webex site from joining meetings.
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Automatic Lock—Automatically lock meetings after the meeting starts.
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Automatic Recording—Automatically start recording when the meeting starts.
Branding Updates
We updated references and branding from Webex Teams to Webex in Classrooms Collaboration, Setup, and Admin Panel. For more information about the Webex Suite branding, see New Webex Suite and Branding.
February 2021
February 15, 2021
Token Expiration
Prior to this release, you received a prompt to sign in to Webex from within Virtual Meetings when scheduling or modifying a meeting. With this release, you're prompted to sign in to Webex whenever you use Virtual Meetings with an expired Webex access token. Ensuring that your token is active improves the syncing of recordings.

February 2, 2021
Modifications to Recordings for Virtual Meetings
Previously, only recordings for meetings hosted from within the Webex Education Connector appeared in the Recordings section of Virtual Meetings. Now, any meetings scheduled through Virtual Meetings appear in the Virtual Meetings Recordings, regardless of whether they were hosted from Webex Education Connector.
January 2021
January 22, 2021
Canvas Role Support in Classroom Collaboration
Prior to this release, if Classroom Collaboration was turned on for a course, everyone enrolled was added to the team for that course.
Canvas Admins can now indicate which roles have access to Classroom Collaboration. In the Admin Panel, admins can uncheck any roles that they don’t want to have access to Classroom Collaboration for the courses in which the feature is enabled.
When an admin unchecks a role, the Webex Education Connector removes anyone in the team who doesn't have an approved role during the next membership sync. New people who enroll aren't added to the team if they don't have an approved role.
September 2020
September 30, 2020
Recording Library
Available for Canvas, D2L, Moodle, Sakai, and Schoology. Instructors may have recordings of their Webex meetings that they can reuse for future semesters or in other class offerings. The recording library allows instructors to create recordings and publish it for students in other classes. Administrators can control the availability of the recording library from the Admin Console.
The recording library includes the following options:
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Instructors can view and delete their own recordings.
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Instructors can host a meeting within a course and make a recording of it without making the meeting visible to students.
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Instructors can make a private recording of a meeting and share it with students in a one class or multiple classes.
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Students can view recorded meetings that the instructor shared with them.
Attendance
Instructors may want to see who joined their Webex meetings and when they joined through their LMS. They can take attendance in each meeting, indicate excused absences, and assign a grade for students based on their attendance. Attendance is taken only for students who join through the LMS.
The attendance features include the following options:
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Instructors can view attendance for each meeting.
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Instructors can indicate excused absences from meetings, which count as the student being present in the grade calculation.
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Instructors can choose whether to grade a meeting or not.
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Instructors can export an attendance report for their meetings as a CSV file.
Edit Recurring Meetings
Now, instructors can make edits to their recurring meetings.
July 2020
July 14, 2020
Removal of Required Authorization Step in Meetings—Canvas, Moodle, D2L
Prior to this release, instructors or administrators needed to authorize the application in the Setup tab before using Virtual Meetings or Office Hours. In this release, we’ve made authorization optional for using Virtual Meetings and Office Hours.
When an instructor attempts to create a Virtual Meeting for the first time and the application isn’t authorized with the LMS, they’re prompted to authorize the application. They can choose to authorize or opt out.
If the instructor authorizes the application, meetings created via Virtual Meetings sync to the LMS calendar and they can activate the grading features. Office Hours are available.
If the instructor chooses not to authorize the application, meetings created via Virtual Meetings don’t sync with the LMS calendar, and the grading feature is disabled. An instructor can authorize the application later and have historical and future Virtual Meetings sync with the LMS calendar. Office Hours are available when the instructor opts out of authorizing.
There’s no change to authorization for Classroom Collaboration. Authorization via the Setup tab is required for using Classroom Collaboration.
Removal of Required Authorization Step in Meetings—Blackboard Learn, Blackboard Ultra, Sakai
Prior to this release, instructors and administrators needed to authorize the application in the Setup tab prior to using Webex Education Connector functionality. In this release, we’ve removed the requirement to authorize the application to use Virtual Meetings and Office Hours. Authorization via the Setup tab is required for Classroom Collaboration in Blackboard and Sakai and use of the Grading Feature in Blackboard.
Time Zone Modifications
With this release, instructors or administrators don’t need to sync the time zone first from the Setup tab. They can directly create meetings without clicking Sync for Time Zone and Authorize. Instructors can view and change their time zone from the Setup tab and have that time zone apply to the course. If the time zone changes in the course, it only affects future meetings in that course. Prior meetings aren’t changed.
July 1, 2020
New Recordings Tab in Virtual Meetings
We’ve moved recordings to a new Recordings Tab within Virtual Meetings. The Recordings Tab lists all recordings for meetings initiated from within the Webex Education Connector. The new Recordings Tab also resolves previous issues with Recordings syncing to the Webex Education Connector.
May 2020
May 19, 2020
Additional Functionality on the LMS Integration Admin Panel
The Admin Panel is only available in Canvas, Moodle, D2L, and Sakai. |
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Office Hours: Admins can make office hours available or unavailable to instructors.
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Non-instructor roles creating meetings: Admins can disable the ability for non-instructor roles to create meetings.
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Custom Support URL: Admins can specify their own custom support URL in place of the standard Webex Education Connector support URL.
Modifications to Virtual Meetings
We've modified the format of the time zone when scheduling a meeting so that it's is more consistent with the formatting in Webex.
April 2020
April 13, 2020
LMS Integration Admin Panel
The Admin Panel is only available in Canvas, Moodle, D2L, and Sakai. |
We've added the Admin Panel in the Setup tab for each course in Webex Education Connector.
LMS administrators can use the Admin Panel to define feature availability for all courses in the LMS, and see usage across all courses. Take a look at the tabs in the Admin Panel below:
Settings—LMS administrators can specify which features to enable for instructors and students in the Webex Education Connector.
Analytics—View top level metrics for usage within the Webex Education Connector.
Webex site administrators can access all site-wide analytics from Site Administration or Control Hub. |
Virtual Meetings—View all virtual meeting recordings for meetings initiated within the Webex Education Connector.
March 2020
March 28, 2020
Status Page
We're providing a status page to inform customers of any downtime: https://status.educonnector.io.
Design Update
The new look and feel matches the Webex Meetings and Webex App experience.
Improved Webex App Onboarding Experience
When an instructor enables Webex App, a team for the course is automatically created.
Improved Classroom Collaboration Performance
Fixed an issue where users saw messages, "Unable to load space" or "Conversation not available" when switching spaces.
Canvas: Team Creation per Section
When instructors launch Classroom Collaboration in Canvas for the first time, a team for each section is automatically created. This way students can interact within the course team, or within the team specifically for their section. For instructors who are already using Classroom Collaboration in Canvas, a new team will be created for each section upon the next synchronization.