31-012 Opening Access to your Virtual Classroom for External Personnel and Guests
Overview
When you use the Virtual Classroom in your OpenOlat course you have the option of allowing people without an OpenOlat User ID access to your online meeting. To do this you have two options: Using external links or opening your meeting for guests.
Should only a small group of persons be allowed access, it is recommended to use an external link. Should you want to allow access to the meeting to an undetermined amount of people, it is recommended to open it for guests.
Please note: If you open your meeting for guests, then you make it publicly available for anybody - it is recommended to use additional levels of protection, such as a password or the waiting room, to configure your meeting in this case (see HelpCard 31-011).
Important Steps
Opening your Virtual Classroom to external persons:
- Create the Virtual Classroom either as a course element or add it to the Toolbar and configure your online meeting as described in HelpCard 31-011.
- If you have selected to Add a single meeting, an external link will automatically be created. For a Daily or Weekly recurring meeting you will need to manually tick the checkbox generate URL.
- If desired, a Password for external users and guests can be defined in the configuration as well.
- Save your changes. The changes will be saved.
- The course owner will be able to view the link and the passwort (if set) before entering the room. Both can be copied and sent to the external users and guests.
- External persons need no access to OpenOlat, they will arrive directly in the meeting room via the link. Thus, external persons will not be able to access any meeting recordings that will be published in the course element Virtual Classroom (see HelpCard 31-013).
Opening access to the Virtual Classroom for guests:
In order to open the access to the course element Virtual Classroom for guests it is important to open the access to the whole course for guests (see HelpCard 10-071). Only then will it be possible for you to open the access to meetings for guests.
- Add the course element Virtual Classroom to your course structure and/or add BigBlueButton to the Toolbar in your course (see HelpCard 31-010).
- Configure your online appointment as described in HelpCard 31-011.
- Aktivate the checkbox Guests allowed.
- We recommend the usage of additional protection mechanisms such defining a password or the waiting room through Accept joining users. Both can be activated in the configuration of an online meeting (see HelpCard 31-011).
- Save your changes. The changes will now be saved. Your online meeting will now be accessible for guests.
- The access to meeting recordings can also be opened for guests (see HelpCard 31-013).