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Installing the Moodle integration with Microsoft Teams

  • Article
  • Applies to:
    Microsoft Teams

Moodle, the most popular and open-source Learning Management System (LMS) in the world, is now integrated with Microsoft Teams! This integration helps teachers and students collaborate around Moodle courses, ask questions about their grades and assignments and stay updated with notifications -- right within Teams!

To help IT admins easily set this integration up, we have updated our open-source Moodle Plugin with the following capabilities:

  • Auto-registration of your Moodle server with Microsoft Entra ID.
  • One-click deployment of your Moodle Assistant bot to Azure.
  • Auto-provisioning of teams and auto-synchronization of team enrollments for all or select Moodle courses.
  • Auto-installation of the Moodle tab and the Moodle Assistant bot into each synchronized team. (Coming soon)
  • One-click publishing of the Moodle app into your private Teams App Store. (Coming soon)

To learn more about the functionality this integration provides, see Installing the Moodle integration with Microsoft Teams.

Prerequisites

In order to install and configure this application you'll need:

  1. Moodle administrator credentials
  2. Microsoft Entra administrator credentials
  3. An Azure subscription you can create new resources in

Step 1: Install the Moodle Plugin

The Moodle integration in Microsoft Teams is powered by the open source Moodle plugin set. To install the plugin in your Moodle server:

  1. First, download the Moodle plugin set and save it to your local computer. You'll need to use version 3.5 or newer.
  2. Sign in to your Moodle server as an administrator, and select Site administration from the left navigation panel.
  3. Select the Plugins tab, and then click Install plugins.
  4. Under the Install plugin from ZIP file section click the Choose a file button.
  5. Select the Upload a file option from the left navigation, browse for the file you downloaded above and click Upload this file.
  6. Select the Site administration option from the left navigation panel again to return to your admin dashboard. Scroll down to the Local plugins and click the Microsoft Office 365 Integration link. Keep this configuration page open in a separate browser tab as you'll be using it throughout the rest of this process.

You can find more information on how to install Moodle plugins in the Moodle documentation.

Important Note: Keep your Microsoft 365 or Office 365 Moodle Plugin configuration page open in a separate browser tab as you will be returning to this set of pages throughout this process.

Don't have a Moodle site already? You might want to check out our Moodle on Azure repo where you can quickly deploy a Moodle instance on Azure and customize it to your needs.

Step 2: Configure the connection between the Microsoft 365 or Office 365 plugin and Microsoft Entra ID

Next you'll need to register Moodle as an application in your Microsoft Entra ID. We've provided a PowerShell script to help you complete this process. The PowerShell Script provisions a new Microsoft Entra application for your Microsoft 365 or Office 365 organization, which will be used by the Moodle Plugin. The script will provision the app for your Microsoft 365 or Office 365 tenant, set up all the required Reply URLs and Permissions for the provisioned app and return the AppID and Key. You can use the generated AppID and Key in your Moodle Plugin Setup Page to configure your Moodle server with Microsoft Entra ID. If you want to see the detailed manual steps that the PowerShell script is automating, you can find them in the full documentation for the plugin.

Moodle tab for Microsoft Teams information flow

Illustration of Moodle tab for Microsoft Teams information flow
  1. From the Microsoft 365 or Office 365 Integration plugin page, select the Setup tab.
  2. Click the Download PowerShell Script button and save it to your local computer.
  3. You'll need to prepare the PowerShell script from the ZIP file. To do so:
    • Download and extract the Moodle-AzureAD-Powershell.zip file.
    • Open the extracted folder.
    • Right-click on the Moodle-AzureAD-Script.ps1 file and select Properties.
    • Under the General tab of the Properties window, check the Unblock box next to the Security attribute at the bottom.
    • Click OK.
    • Copy the directory path of the extracted folder.
  4. Next you'll run PowerShell as an administrator:
    • Click Start.
    • Type PowerShell.
    • Right-click Windows PowerShell.
    • Click "Run as Administrator".
  5. Navigate to the unzipped directory by typing cd ...\...\Moodle-AzureAD-Powershell where ...\... is the path to the directory.
  6. Execute the PowerShell script by:
    • Enter Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser.
    • Enter .\Moodle-AzureAD-Script.ps1.
    • Log in to your Microsoft 365 or Office 365 Administrator account in the pop-up window.
    • Enter the name of the Microsoft Entra Application (Ex. Moodle/Moodle plugin).
    • Enter the URL of your Moodle server.
    • Copy the Application ID and Application Key generated by the script and save them.
  7. Next you'll need to add the Id and Key to the Moodle Plugin. Return to the plugin administration page (Site administration > Plugins > Microsoft 365 Integration).
  8. On the Setup tab add the Application Id and Application Key you copied previously, then click Save changes.
  9. Once the page refreshes you should now see a new section Choose connection method. Click the checkbox labeled Default and then click Save changes again.
  10. Once the page refreshes you will see another new section Admin consent & additional information.
    • Click the Provide Admin Consent link, enter your Microsoft 365 or Office 365 Global Administrator credentials, then Accept to grant the permissions.
    • Next to the Microsoft Entra tenant field click the Detect button.
    • Next to the OneDrive for Business URL click the Detect button.
    • Once the fields populate, click the Save changes button again.
  11. Click the Update button to verify the installation, then Save changes.
  12. Next you'll need to synchronize users between your Moodle server and Microsoft Entra ID. Depending on your environment, you may select different options during this stage. Note that the configuration you set here will run with each Moodle cron run (typically once a day) to keep everything in sync. To get started:
    • Switch to the Sync Settings tab
    • In the Sync users with Microsoft Entra ID section, select the checkboxes that apply to your environment. Typically you would select at least:
      • Create accounts in Moodle for users in Microsoft Entra ID
      • Update all accounts in Moodle for users in Microsoft Entra ID
    • In the User Creation Restriction section you can set up a filter to limit the Microsoft Entra users that will be synced to Moodle.
    • The User Field Mapping section will allow you to customize the Microsoft Entra ID to Moodle User Profile field mapping.
    • In the Teams Sync section you can choose to automatically create Groups (i.e. Teams) for some, or all, of your existing Moodle courses.
  13. To validate the cron jobs (and run them manually if you wish to for the first run) click the Scheduled tasks management page link in the Sync users with Microsoft Entra ID section. This will take you to the Scheduled Tasks page.
    • Scroll down and find the job Sync users with Microsoft Entra ID job and click Run now.
    • If you chose to create Groups based on existing courses, you can also run the Create user groups in Office 365 job.
  14. Return to the plugin administration page (Site administration > Plugins > Microsoft 365 Integration) and select the Teams Settings page. You'll need to configure some security settings to enable the Teams app integration.
    • To enable OpenID Connect, click the Manage Authentication link, and click the eye icon on the OpenId Connect line if it is greyed out.
    • Next you'll need to enable frame embedding. Click the HTTP Security link, then click the checkbox next to Allow frame embedding.
    • The next step is to enable web services which will enable the Moodle API features. Click the Advanced Features link, then make sure the checkbox next to Enable web services is checked.
    • Finally you'll need to enable the external services for Microsoft 365 or Office 365. Click the External services link then:
      • Click Edit on the Moodle Office 365 Webservices row.
      • Mark the checkbox next to Enabled, then click Save Changes
    • Next you'll need to edit your authenticated user permissions to allow them to create web service tokens. Click the Editing role 'Authenticated user' link. Scroll down and find the Create a web service token capability and mark the Allow checkbox.

Step 3: Deploy the Moodle Assistant Bot to Azure

The free Moodle Assistant Bot for Microsoft Teams helps teachers and students answer questions about their courses, assignments, grades and other information in Moodle. The bot also sends Moodle notifications to students and teachers right within Teams. This bot is an open source project maintained by Microsoft, and is available on GitHub.

Note

In this section you will deploy resources to your Azure subscription, and all resources will be configured using the free tier. Depending on the usage of your bot, you may need to scale these resources. If you want to just use the Moodle tab without the bot, skip to step 4.

Moodle bot information flow

llustration of Moodle bot for Microsoft Teams information flow

To install the bot, you'll first need to register it on the Microsoft identity platform. This allows your Bot to authenticate against your Microsoft endpoints. To register your bot:

  1. Return to the plugin administration page (Site administration > Plugins > Microsoft 365 Integration) and select the Teams Settings tab.
  2. Click the Microsoft Application Registration Portal link and login with your Microsoft Id.
  3. Enter a name for your app (Eg. MoodleBot) and click the Create button.
  4. Copy the Application Id and paste it into the Bot Application ID field on the Team Settings page.
  5. Click the Generate New Password button. Copy the generated password and paste it into the Bot Application Password field on the Team Settings page.
  6. Scroll to the bottom of the form and click Save Changes.

Now that you've generated your Application Id and Password, it's time to deploy your bot to Azure. Click on the Deploy to Azure button and fill out the form with the necessary information (the Bot Application Id, Bot Application Password and the Moodle Secret are on the Team Settings page, and the Azure information is on the Setup page). Once you've got the form filled out, click the check box to agree to the terms and conditions then click the Purchase button (all Azure resources are deployed to the free tier).

Once the resources are finished deploying to Azure, you'll need to configure the Moodle plugin with its messaging endpoint. First, you'll need to get the endpoint from your Bot in Azure. To do that:

  1. If you aren't already, log into the Azure portal.
  2. In the left pane select Resource groups.
  3. From the list select the resource group you just used (or created) while deploying your Bot.
  4. Select the WebApp Bot resource from the list of resources in the group.
  5. Copy the Messaging Endpoint from the Overview section.
  6. In Moodle, open the Team Settings page of your Moodle Plugin.
  7. In the Bot Endpoint field paste the URL you just copied and change the word messages to webhook. The URL should now look like https://botname.azurewebsites.net/api/webhook
  8. Click Save Changes
  9. Once your changes have saved, go back to the Team Settings tab, click the Download manifest file button and save the manifest package to your computer (you'll use it in the next section).

Step 4: Deploy your Microsoft Teams app

Now that you have your Bot deployed to Azure and configured to talk to your Moodle server, it's time to deploy your Microsoft Teams app. To do this you'll load the manifest file you downloaded from the Moodle Plugin Team Settings page in the previous step.

Before you can install the app you'll need to make sure external apps and sideloading of apps is enabled. To do so you can follow these steps. Once you've ensured that external apps are enabled, you can follow the steps below to deploy your app.

  1. Open Microsoft Teams.
  2. Click the Store icon on the lower left of the navigation bar.
  3. Click the Upload a custom app link from the list of options. Note: If you're logged in as a global administer you'll have the option of uploading the app to your organization's app store, otherwise you'll only be able to load the app for Teams you're a part of ("sideloading").
  4. Select the manifest.zip package you downloaded previously and click Save. If you haven't yet downloaded the manifest package, you can do so from the Team Settings tab of the plugin configuration page in Moodle.

Now that you have the app installed you can add the tab to any channel that you have access to. To do so navigate to the channel, click the + symbol and select your app from the list. Follow the prompts to finish adding your Moodle course tab to a channel.

That's it! You and your team, can now start working with your Moodle courses directly from Microsoft Teams.

To share any feature requests or feedback with us, please visit our Feedback portal.

Note

Microsoft will be moving from UserVoice to our own customer feedback solution on a product-by-product basis during 2021. Learn more.