Account-Level vs User-Level OAuth for Higher Education

App Marketplace
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Hi there. I am leading development of the Zoom integration at my company. We are building an application intended for higher education use only, in which advisors will connect their account to Zoom in order for students to be able to schedule Zoom-based meetings with the advisor. We have been beta testing our application for about two months now using a User-Level OAuth application, with about 10 of our customers. They love it so far.

We have started the final review process with Zoom and this feedback was given to us by the functional review team:

Education Apps - Account Level recommendation

Since your app is intended for Education use, we highly recommend you change your application type to Account-level. This way, school admins can determine which apps to enable on their accounts. Please read this documentation for more information on our Marketplace Principles: Zoom App Marketplace App Review Guidelines and Principles And this document on the differences between User-Managed and Account-level apps: Key concepts for Zoom Developer Platform

We are having a tough time deciding between the two types. We have some questions which will help us make a decision:

  1. Can an OAuth app be changed from User-Level to Account-Level? If yes, would this disrupt our beta testers? It seems like we will probably need to create a new app and start a new beta test if we wanted to go with Account-Level; is that right?

  2. Does Zoom require that we use Account-Level for our higher education app, or is it ok if we choose to keep using User-Level?

  3. We have concerns that not all of our customers may have Zoom Pro plans. Some schools do not pay for Zoom and instead rely on faculty to use personal Zoom accounts. If we switch to Account-Level, would this prevent these users from using our Zoom integration? Is there any free option for them to use an Account-Level app?

  4. When a student schedules with an advisor, we want to make a Zoom meeting that includes that advisor’s Zoom email as the host. Many of our users have a different email on our system than on Zoom. With a User-Level app, we do not need to worry about this, because the OAuth flow creates a perfect link between our account and the Zoom account; in fact this is the primary reason we chose to use User-Level in the beginning.
    When using Account-Level, is there any best practice for linking our individual advisors to Zoom so that we know which email to use?

  5. If we continue using a User-Level app, are there any additional security or privacy rules that we must follow if the advisor were to link their personal Zoom account rather than a school-managed Zoom account?

Thank you so much for your time answering all these questions!

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Hi thanks for reaching out to our Devforum! I will tag my friend @nigel.hughey here since he is a SME!

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Thank you Catalina and Nigel! I appreciate your help with this.

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Hi @nigel.hughey and @catalina.diaz! Is there any chance of an answer this week? I’m worried that we’re running up on our Zoom beta expiration date. It may need to be extended again. Thanks so much!

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Hi @MitchTalmadgeConexED

Thank you for reaching out regarding your app, and I apologize for the late reply.

I’ll answer your questions here:

  1. OAuth apps cannot be changed from user-level to admin-level. A new app submission is required.

  2. We recommend that apps intended for Education are Account-level, but this is not a hard requirement. User-level Educational apps must have a mechanism for preventing K-12 aged users from authorizing the app, such as gating the app landing page behind a login.

  3. Account-level apps can only be authorized by Zoom users with an admin role. This does not prevent free accounts from authorizing

  4. The meeting:write:admin scope allows you to view and schedule meetings on behalf of any user on the Zoom account.

  5. Your User-level Education app must be FERPA compliant and have an age-gate mechanism to prevent K-12 aged users from authorizing the app.

Hope this is helpful, please let me know if you have any further questions.

Regards,

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Please let us know if you require an additional beta url extension. You can DM here directly for this

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Thanks so much for your responses, @nigel.hughey! They are very helpful.

We would appreciate an extension – I looked for a DM button but I don’t think it is accessible to me. You’re welcome to DM me if you need info from me. Thank you!

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