LEARN Zoom Frequently Asked Questions
Following is a set of frequently asked questions and answers regarding LEARN Zoom facility hosted by LEARN. These are specific questions and answers regarding the On-Prem Zoom Video Conferencing facility. There are many other helpful documents on the web with generic information on zoom facility and features. Further, for step by step guide on the use of LEARN.Zoom facility, please refer to the following link:
https://ws.learn.ac.lk/wiki/ZoomInstWorkshops
Basics
1. What is LEARN Zoom?
LEARN Zoom is also Zoom (https://zoom.us), but it has been locally hosted (on premise), partially managed and provided by Lanka Education and Research Network (LEARN) to its member institutions for the utilization of synchronous virtual classrooms and meetings.
2. I have a normal/regular Zoom account. How do I get a LEARN.Zoom account?
Use the instructions available at the following URL to join LEARN.Zoom https://ws.learn.ac.lk/wiki/ZoomInstWorkshops/zoomguide/signin. You need to have an institutional login to join. If you do not have one, please contact the network operation centre of your institution. As of now, LEARN is exhausted with the LEARN Zoom licenses and we are only providing LEARN Zoom shared accounts as a interim solution. Please see FAQ 9 for details.
3. What is the difference between regular Zoom and LEARN.Zoom?
Regular Zoom meetings are hosted in Zoom cloud and LEARN Zoom meetings are hosted in LEARN servers/cloud. Therefore, the video conferencing realtime traffic are managed locally. These accounts are therefore also known as on-prem (On-premises) accounts. However, meetings metadata (eg: meeting logs, user database, etc) reside on Zoom cloud.
4. Who has access to a LEARN.Zoom account?
The access to LEARN Zoom accounts are decided and managed by individual institutions. As per the LEARN policy, any academic staff member and administrative officials are given access to LEARN Zoom accounts. At present, the total number of licenses LEARN has for the On-Prem account is limited to 7500 and therefore there is a scarcity for providing LEARN Zoom on-prem account for all who request.
5. How many users can join for a meeting in LEARN.Zoom on-prem account?
300 simultaneous users
6. How many simultaneous meetings can I host with a single on-premise account?
The account holders can host two meetings at the same time. Please see the following link for details: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/206122046-Can-I-Host-Concurrent-Meetings-
7. What are the differences between LEARN Zoom On-Prem and LEARN Zoom Basic accounts?
To start with, LEARN.Zoom on-prem accounts are handled by the local LEARN servers and LEARN Zoom basic accounts are hosted in the Zoom cloud server. Therefore, any benefits you get with the on-prem services are not available for the basic accounts. Further, the basic accounts have a user limit of 100 participants and a time limit of 40 minutes per meeting. For more info - https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201363173-Account-types
8. How do I know whether I have an On-Prem LEARN Zoom account?
Method 1:
Log in to your zoom account and in Profile, you can check the type of the zoom account (under the account section)
Method 2:
Log in to the account and once you click on the account in the top-right corner, you will see “on-prem”.
9. What is LEARN Zoom Shared Pool or vSessions (https://zvsession.learn.ac.lk/)?
LEARN Zoom shared pool is a collection of zoom licenses. vSession is a facility provided by LEARN to users who don't have access to LEARN Zoom on-prem accounts. Here, a smaller pool of on-prem licenses is shared among a larger number of users via the vSession (a separate software). To obtain vSession access, the institute should request to have vSession from LEARN. Once the user is registered the user will automatically receive a license to conduct meetings using zoom, cannot conduct simultaneous meetings, one meeting can be conducted at a time. vSession has limited facilities. The pool accounts do not have all the facilities available in LEARN Zoom on-prem. However, the users can host meetings via this facility on the LEARN local servers and enjoy the relevant benefits such as no data charges.
Data Charges
10. Will my students be “charged data” when using LEARN Zoom?
No, students will not be charged for using the LEARN Zoom conferencing facility as long as the meetings are hosted either using LEARN.Zoom on-prem or LEARN.Zoom Pool account.
LEARN.Zoom on-prem meetings are hosted in LEARN on-premises. Therefore the data charges have been released for using LEARN Zoom.
LEARN Zoom basic accounts are hosted in Zoom cloud. Therefore data charges may apply.
11. What do I do when I see data charges on my bill (or my students’ bills) for LEARN Zoom usage?
You should lodge a complaint to your Internet Service Provider (ISP), failing which to the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL).
Resource Utilization
12. Why am I getting a “Server Busy” message?
LEARN on-premise Zoom servers are overloaded as a result of too many users wanting to do their session during busy hours. We, at LEARN, are working on adding more resources and providing an even better service to the Sri Lankan academic community, which has embraced video conferencing and online teaching with great enthusiasm. While we work on the upgrades, I kindly request you to avoid "peak hours" as much as possible when scheduling your activities using LEARN.Zoom platform.
13. How do I know when the server and resources are busy or not?
The best way to check the hours is, log in to https://learn.zoom.us and the busy hours are highlighted with red colour in the graphs. Recommend to avoid the red zoned hours to schedule meetings.
In general, the usage pattern of a regular day is shown in the graph below. Try avoiding the times shown in the red bars.
Webinar Accounts
14. What are LEARN.Zoom Webinar accounts?
Zoom Video Webinar allows you to broadcast a Zoom meeting to up to 500 view-only attendees. Webinar licenses can be associated with your account upon request from LEARN.
As the host or a panellist, you can share your screen, video and audio in a webinar and attendees can use the chat or question and answer options to interact with the host and panellists.
Webinars can require pre-registration, with the option for the host to add custom registration questions, or registration can be turned off for attendees to join by simply clicking a link at the time of the webinar.
15. How do I get access to a LEARN Zoom Webinar account?
LEARN has a very limited number of webinar accounts with a maximum user limit of 500. Therefore, we will only be releasing a webinar feature on the day of the webinar to the user who is requesting the feature. This will be done on a first-come-first-serve basis. Following is the procedure for scheduling/requesting a webinar account.
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Write an email to zoom-webinar@learn.ac.lk with the following details
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Title and a description of the webinar
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Date and time
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The LEARN Zoom on-prem account holders Zoom Sign In Email address (the webinar feature will be enabled to this account)
Zoom Sign In Email can be seen on the profile page when you logged in to the https://learn.zoom.us
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We will respond to your email indicating the availability of the webinar account on the said date/time.
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If our response in item B is positive, then the on-prem account holder is expected to schedule a regular meeting (not a webinar) and can advertise the same to the participants.
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LEARN will enable the webinar feature to the said user on the previous night of the webinar day.
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The on-prem account holder is expected to transfer the meeting he/she already scheduled to a webinar by following the instructions available at the following link (this could be done only after LEARN enables webinar feature on the previous night): https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/360042761551-Converting-meetings-and-webinars
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The on-prem account holder has to download ALL the webinar related information from their account right after the webinar is over on the same day (whichever is earlier).
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LEARN will remove the webinar feature by 11 pm from the on-prem account holder.
Updated on the 30th of June 2021