Canvas How-To: Control Availability of Zoom Recordings

This page contains instructions for enabling Panopto's Approval workflow on the Panopto Recordings folder in a Canvas course. This is useful in order to prevent course Zoom meeting recordings from being viewable in the Panopto Recordings folder as soon as they're copied over from Zoom. With the Approval workflow enabled, instructors can take time to edit Zoom recordings in Panopto if necessary before releasing them to students for viewing.

Note 1: The need for the Approval workflow is only relevant in courses where the instructor has decided to keep the Panopto Recordings link visible in the course navigation! If the instructor chooses to hide that link for whatever reason, there is no need or purpose for dealing with the Approval workflow.
Note 2: Only Zoom meetings that are scheduled using the Zoom tool in Canvas will be placed into the Panopto Recordings folder. These are the only Zoom recordings this page is concerned about.

Part 1 – Enable Approval Workflow

  1. Open the Canvas course and click the Panopto Recordings link in the course navigation.
  2. Click the Folder Settings icon ("gear") in the upper right.
  3. Click Settings in the left-hand menu.
  4. Scroll to the Availability section at the bottom.
  5. Choose "when approved by a publisher" to specify when videos in this folder will be available to watch. In this situation, the course instructor is the "publisher".
  6. Click the "X" to close the Folder Settings window.

What happens now?

Any existing videos in the Panopto Recordings folder will be disabled when the Approval workflow is enabled, and they must be approved before being viewable again. Any new videos (including new Zoom recordings) added directly to the Panopto Recordings folder will also need to be approved.

Part 2 – Approve Individual Videos

With Approval enabled, all videos that appear in Panopto Recordings need to be approved by the instructor before they can be watched by students. These videos are labelled "Waiting for approval". Here are the steps to approve a video.

  1. Open the Panopto Recordings link in the Canvas course.
  2. Hover over a video and click the Settings button.
  3. Locate the Approval section of the Settings and click "Approve".  The video is now visible and available to viewers.
  4. Close the Settings window.