Zoom has become a common and necessary tool for faculty, staff and students of the California community colleges system, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past year, the system has developed even more ways to effectively and seamlessly integrate Zoom in to your work.
In order to access some of these additional integrations,, your college will need to sign up for a Zoom subaccount,a standalone account within the CCC TechConnect Zoom project that is paid for by CCC TechConnect (a grant-funded project of the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office). A subaccount allows a district and its colleges the freedom to manage their user accounts and all Zoom account settings. Currently, if you’re using Zoom without a subaccount, all settings are predetermined at the master account level, managed by TechConnect Zoom and cannot be changed without affecting every college tied to that master account.
A Zoom subaccount provides your college with direct admin controls, allowing the ability to manage feature settings independently, manage recordings and how they’re saved, have access to valuable user data and set up employee accounts in ways that work best for your college. A subaccount can even set up security permissions in different ways, based on preference, such as requiring a waiting room or password for all meetings.
For example, your college may want to provide a different set of features for their adjunct faculty or for their classified staff. Zoom subaccount provides the flexibility to do this. Without it, all users have the same set of default features and permissions.
Having a Zoom subaccount also gives your college the ability to add SSO (Single Sign-On) to Zoom, allowing access to all of your programs and apps from one location, usually your college website. This gives you access to the Zoom marketplace, which contains hundreds of popular productivity apps such as Slack, Calendly and multiple telehealth applications. These tools and integrations are only available to users through a subaccount.
“The level of service that we can provide our users has increased since we obtained our own Zoom subaccount,” said Matt Donaldson, Director of Information Technology at the College of the Siskiyous. “We are able to respond to requests and resolve issues almost immediately.”
Another benefit of a Zoom subaccount is access to the Canvas app through the Zoom Marketplace. With so many colleges needing to use Zoom and Canvas soon after the pandemic hit, the previous third-party integration wasn’t as optimized as it needed to be. Using the Canvas app directly through Zoom improves performance and is updated regularly, so you’ll always have access to the latest features.
Currently, about 58 colleges have transitioned or are in the process of transitioning to a Zoom subaccount, with Canvas integration being one of the biggest factors.
“So far, faculty and staff have been very happy with the improvements the Canvas app provides, which is only available through a Zoom subaccount,” said Donna Gustafson, Senior Media Help Desk Coordinator at CCC TechConnect.
“While the ability to have greater control over our account was the primary impetus for utilizing the subaccount, the catalyst for the actual switch was the need to install Otter AI to provide closed-captioning for some Zoom meetings,” said Matt Donaldson. “Meeting this accessibility requirement changed a Zoom subaccount from something that was desirable into something that was required.”
If your college is interested in moving to a Zoom subaccount, please have your IT administrator contact support@ccctechconnect.org. TechConnect Zoom will schedule a kickoff meeting, invite the key decision makers and start your college on the path to Zoom independence.
