Create Zoom meetings in Canvas

Zoom is a web conferencing tool that provides remote conferencing services. The Canvas-Zoom integration allows instructors to schedule online meetings from within Canvas and is available in all Canvas sites. To schedule a Canvas Zoom meeting, follow the steps below.

  1. Click Zoom from your course navigation. If you don't see Zoom, you can enable it by going to course > Settings > Navigation. 
    Canvas course navigation menu with arrow pointing to Zoom
  2. Your Zoom account should be automatically provisioned.
    • If you see an error message, refresh the page and try again as the auto-provisioning may have a lag. If you continue to see an error, manually install the Zoom software and login for the first time by going to stanford.zoom.us and clicking Download in the header. 
  3. In Canvas, click Schedule a New Meeting

  4. Fill out the meeting settings. 
    • Topic: the title of your meeting
    • When: date and time of the meeting
    • Duration: total amount of time the meeting will run for (you can enter a meeting early)
    • Recurring meeting: meetings that will be used more than once in the course (e.g., weekly discussion meetings)
    • Registration: leave unchecked
    • Security: Passcode is selected. It’s also recommended that you select Only authenticated members can join meetings.
    • Video Host/Participant: select whether you'd like your/your participants' video to be automatically turned on or off
    • Meeting Options Recommendations:
      • We recommend NOT selecting Enable join before host
      • We recommend NOT selecting Use Personal Meeting ID
      • Breakout Room Preassign. You can add students individually when you Create Rooms, as long as they can authenticate into Stanford with their stanford.edu account. 
        • If you'd like automatic recordings of the meeting, select Record the meeting automatically and save the recording in the cloud. 

          Once processed, all Zoom cloud recordings are made available to students within the Canvas Zoom tool as well as imported into Panopto Course Videos.

    • Alternative Host: You can add the official (non-alias) stanford.edu email of any teaching team member you’d like to be able to start the meeting to the Alternative Hosts field. 
  1.  
  2. Click Save. You will now see the conference appear under 'Upcoming Meetings' 

    A Meeting that appears under the upcoming meetings tab of Canvas Zoom integration

Student Notifications

By default, once your meeting is scheduled, students will receive an email notification (if the Canvas course is published). In addition, the meeting will appear on students' Canvas Calendar. Recommendation: set up recurring meetings prior to publishing a Canvas course to prevent overwhelming students with notifications.Canvas calendar with events including Zoom meeting slots

Web Portal Settings

There are settings and features available for enabling in the Zoom app and web portal that are not available to be enabled on Canvas. If you know you will only be using Zoom for class meetings and recordings, you can change your Zoom settings in the Zoom web portal to the recommended settings below.

  1. Go to the Zoom web portal and click the Log In button to login with your SUNet ID.
    Stanford Zoom webportal login page
  2. Click Settings and then Meeting
    Zoom Meeting settings for scheduling a meeting
  3. Find Join before host:  Turn this option off
  4. Find Mute participants upon entry: Depends. This is recommended for large live lectures, but not for small discussion groups.
  5. Find Only authenticated users can join meetings: Turn this on.
    • Note: All participants must be logged into their Zoom profile or through the Zoom application. If you create meetings in Canvas, this setting is not picked up from your general settings and needs to be added to particular meetings in the web portal.
  6. Find Closed captioning* (under Advanced): this setting must be turned on if you have a student who requires a live transcriptionist to provide captioning for the meeting. This setting can only be changed in your Zoom Profile Settings, not in a particular meeting. 

For more information on Zoom, see the Using Zoom in Canvas guide.