The Blackboard – Microsoft Teams Integration tool allows staff to create Microsoft Teams meetings through Blackboard and add the joining link directly into a Blackboard course’s content area.

Please note that the Blackboard – Microsoft Teams Integration is disabled on courses by default. It can be enabled at Department level only, and not for individual courses. Departments that wish to enable the tool should raise a request via their respective Faculty Ed-Tech teams.

Once the Microsoft Teams meeting has been created and the Add to Calendar or Copy option selected, the meeting will appear in the Microsoft Teams calendar and Blackboard course calendars for all staff and students enrolled on the course.

Microsoft Teams links can only be created and deployed onto a course by users enrolled as either a Course Admin or a Course Teacher in the Blackboard course where the link will appear.

Instructions

To create a Blackboard – Microsoft Teams meeting in a course, that belongs to a department that has opted into the integration, carry out the following steps:

1. Log in to Blackboard and navigate to the required Blackboard course.
2. Under the Course Management menu, select Course Tools and then Microsoft Teams.
3. The first time you use the tool, you will be presented with a ‘Blackboard Learn Authorisation’ warning, informing you that the integration will be interfacing with your Microsoft Teams account. Click Allow to enable this. You should only see this message the first time you use the tool.
4. Sign in to your Microsoft Teams account.
5. Select Create meeting link.
6. Add the meeting title, select the date and time and select Create.
7. On the Meeting created screen you must select either Add to Calendar or Copy (dependant on your browser), and then OK for the popup message that appears, for the meeting to be added to Microsoft Teams and Blackboard.
   Note: If you navigate away from this page without selecting Add to Calendar or Copy the meeting will not be created.
8. You will then be notified that the action was successful. You can now navigate back to the Blackboard course by clicking on the course name via the breadcrumb trail at the top left of the screen.
9. The link to the Microsoft Teams meeting will be automatically added as a Blackboard web link to the first Blackboard content area in the course left-hand navigation menu (reading from top to bottom). From here, it can be moved into any other Blackboard content area using the Blackboard content move tools.

The link will only become visible to students in the Blackboard course at the time of the meeting. When students click on the meeting link in the Blackboard course, their browser will prompt them to open their Microsoft Teams application, which will launch the meeting.

Note: The link will be created to appear in the Blackboard frameset. As such, students who click the link will receive the standard message ‘The content below is outside of the Blackboard Learn environment.’ when they click the meeting link, and will be presented with an additional option to open the content in a new window. To prevent students seeing this message and having to click on the extra link, staff can edit the link to change the ‘Open in new Window’ option to Yes.