If your institution has a Zoom account, and if your Administrator has configured the Zoom Integration for Echo360, you can now have your Zoom meetings recorded to the cloud and then automatically uploaded to Echo360.
There are a few help articles you should review to make the Zoom integration with Echo360 as seamless as possible:
- This one, that provides the recommended Zoom settings and selections
- Zoom Settings for your Account - account-specific options for using Zoom
- Launching a Zoom Meeting from Echo360 - launching ad hoc Zoom meetings from inside Echo360
- Mapping Zoom meetings to Echo360 course sections - having Zoom put your scheduled class meetings directly into classes
The Zoom integration with Echo360 simply allows Echo360 to pull Zoom meeting recordings from the cloud into each user's Echo360 media Library. If mapped, those recordings can also automatically be published into course sections.
Each user can opt in or opt out of the automatic copy as desired.
Echo360 knows whose library to place the recordings into by matching the Echo360 email address to the Zoom account email address. If your Zoom account email is different than your Echo360 account email, you can configure an Alternate Zoom Email address, to ensure proper attribution of the recordings.
NOTE: Echo360 does not REMOVE recordings from the Zoom Cloud. Echo360 simply copies the recordings to Echo360, meaning they will be resident in both places until removed.
Zoom Integration Requirements
All of the integration happens on the administrative side of Echo360. All you have to do is ensure that:
- You are NOT using a Zoom Free account outside of your institution. Zoom integration with Echo360 does not work with a free account and those cloud recordings are not automatically copied. You CAN however manually upload any Zoom recordings to Echo360 if needed.
- You manually select Record to the Cloud when you start recording the meeting.
- BETTER YET: Log into Zoom and set your configured meetings or personal Zoom Room default to Record to Cloud. You will also want to check or confirm WHAT is recorded, in these settings, as outlined in the recording options section below.
- Your Zoom login email matches the email address you have in Echo360. If you're not sure because you log in via an institution portal (SSO) or enter through your LMS/VLE, click the Settings icon in the top right corner of Echo360 and select Account Settings. Compare the email address shown to your Zoom login/email address.
- ALTERNATELY, if your Zoom login email and your Echo360 email do NOT match, use the Alternate Zoom Email page to add your Zoom login email address to your account. The alternate email MUST be recognized by the institution's Zoom account. If you are not sure, ask your administrator.
Other Notes:
- If your institution's Zoom account also provides meeting transcriptions, the Zoom Transcript will be brought into Echo360 along with the recording. You may then see Zoom as the author of the transcript in the Transcript editor.
- Zoom hosts can stop and start a recording, which results in multiple recorded "parts" of the single session. Echo360 will get all of the segments, but they will still be separate media files (i.e., not "stitched" together).
- Zoom meetings greater than 8 hours will not be copied into Echo360. Those must be manually downloaded/uploaded into Echo360 if appropriate.
- Zoom recordings greater than 5GB will not be copied into Echo360. Those must be manually downloaded/uploaded into Echo360 if appropriate.
- You CAN opt-in or out of automatic ingestion of Zoom recordings into Echo360. This setting can be toggled on or off by instructors or teaching assistants for their own accounts through the Account Settings page. Meaning you can temporarily suspend/enable Echo360 retrieval of your Zoom cloud recordings, then suspend/enable them again when appropriate.
Students can use Zoom, if they have a zoom login for the institution's account. This is not common but it is possible. Once again, in order for those recordings to be automatically ingested by Echo360, they must be recorded using an Zoom account that matches the user's Email address in Echo360, and they must be recorded to the Zoom cloud. NOTE however that Students cannot alter their Zoom settings in Echo360. Administrators can turn off automatic-ingestion for student accounts by editing the user profile for any student to whom this might apply. Or Administrators can request that the default for opt in/opt out be changed for their institution.
AS ALWAYS however, Zoom meetings can be recorded directly to the local machine and uploaded manually to your library. They can also be recorded to the Zoom cloud, downloaded from Zoom, then uploaded to Echo360.
Recording Layout Options in Zoom
Unless set and enforced by your Zoom Administrator, when you configure your Zoom meeting room and set Record to Cloud as the default option, you can change the Cloud recording settings.
For the normal two-channel "speaker view with display/shared screen" experience, be sure to enable Record active speaker with shared screen option. This is shown in the below figure.
While the shared screen with speaker view is the one normally selected, you can select others. Echo360 has a priority level for retrieving these recordings from Zoom, in that we only pull in one type for each meeting recording, even if multiple are selected. The priority we use is:
- Shared screen with speaker view: MP4 file with audio and video showing both active speaker view and shared content
- Shared Screen: MP4 file with audio and video showing the shared screen only
- Shared screen with gallery view: MP4 file with audio and video showing both gallery view and shared content
- Active Speaker: MP4 file with audio and video showing the active speaker view only
- Gallery View: MP4 file with audio and video showing the gallery view only
Finally, Echo360 WILL retrieve multiple parts of a single meeting instance. This means that if the meeting recording has to be stopped and restarted, Echo360 sees that the meeting has separate parts and will pull all parts (of the same recording type). For example, a class recording has three segments; Echo360 sees Part 1/3, Part 2/3, and Part 3/3 and pulls all three recordings, processes them and places them in the host's library. NOTE however that these will be separate files. Echo360 does not "stitch together" the separate segments.
Note however that if a single meeting instance has multiple segments AND you have your Zoom meetings mapped to Echo360 sections, ONLY the LONGEST segment will be published to a class in the section. All segments, however, will be placed into your library.
If you have enabled Record active speaker, gallery view, and shared screen separately, be sure you ALSO have one the above-listed options enabled. Echo360 can only pull a single recording type for any given meeting. If you are recording the speaker, gallery view, and shared screen separately, the ingest will have only ONE of these three recordings.