I had issues using zoom… here is my story

Around two years ago, we started doing an exploration of different web conferencing solutions. As part of that, I had a free testing account with zoom. After some time, I had made my mind up on which platform I wanted to recommend, and stopped testing. Time passed and we didn’t immediately switch to the new platform. My account expired with zoom.

Then come the Covid situation and suddenly we are standing zoom up on campus in 24 hours, and for most people it was working great. For me, not so much. If I went to stonybrook.zoom.us I got an error when trying to login with single sign in. If I went to the LTI link in Blackboard, there was mixed results depending on if we tried deleting my account and sending a new invite to the system. I tried incognito windows and different computers/browsers. Nothing worked.

Then finally, I went to zoom.us and tried to open my old test account directly. I didn’t remember the password, and sent off a “forgot password” request. Set the new password, logged in and saw that I could change my email. That seemed hopeful. (In fact I had been telling faculty before we stood zoom up, that if they wanted to become familiar with zoom, go ahead and get a free account, but don’t use your stonybrook.edu email.) When I changed the email, they sent an email to the stonybrook.edu account that I had to click to actually make the switch.

After I clicked in that email… the SSO issues finally went away and I could use my zoom account.

So – maybe this struggle is real for others. Hopefully someone else can learn from my issues.

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