Monthly Archives: February 2022

On December 29^th Baruch changed Zoom authentication from the Baruch username and password to using the CUNY Login to access Zoom.  We are working through some user issues and would like to make the following recommendations to faculty

• The “Baruch.zoom.us” option for SSO no longer works—users must use “cuny.zoom.us” as the SSO option to log in, and authentication will redirect to the CUNY Web Applications Login screen which takes your CUNY login id (firstname.lastnameXX@login.cuny.edu) and your CUNY Login password.
  

• When adding alternative hosts, or preloading breakout rooms in Zoom, you must now use a student’s CUNY Login ID since Zoom now knows the user as their CUNY Login and not their @baruch.cuny.edu or @baruchmail.cuny.edu email address. CUNY Login IDs are available on CUNYfirst course rosters but will need the @login.cuny.edu appended to them (this spreadsheet might help).
• The “CUNY Users” option for authenticated users only was not working correctly until recently.  It now should allow any account that ends with “cuny.edu” to connect to a meeting restricted with that option.  If you have changed your authentication options you may need to reset them to the account defaults to see this change.
  

• You will also need to remove and reset authentication options for meetings set with the old option.  You should see “*.cuny.edu” as the domain restriction for the “CUNY Users” setting.
  

• Please note that the “Baruch Users Only” option will NOT work for any student in your classes who has a primary affiliation with another school.  Their username will be in another CUNY colleges’ Zoom account.  We strongly recommend against using “Baruch Users Only” to protect classes and to use “CUNY Users” to ensure all CUNY students can get to the class.
• Most student login issues are due to using “Baruch.zoom.us” instead of “cuny.zoom.us” for SSO.  However, students who have transferred to Baruch from another CUNY school may receive a message that they need to verify their account by checking an email sent to their @login.cuny.edu address.  In most cases this goes to their preferred email in CUNYfirst, which may be their Baruchmail account, another CUNY email account, or a personal account.  They need to verify their preferred email address setting and look for that verification message there.  This is because their user ID must be moved from their old school to Baruch and verification is needed.  If for some reason they have not received that email to any of their accounts in CUNYfirst they should open a ticket with the Helpdesk who will coordinate with CUNY CIS to resolve the issue.
• If there are issues with users being unable to access meetings due to authentication issues you can disable the “Require authentication to join” (or “Only authenticated users can join”) option for meetings until the user issues are resolved.  As always, all meetings should be authenticated with a passcode and/or waiting room.
• There are four CUNY colleges not using CUNY Login for Zoom:  BMCC, John Jay, Hostos, and City College.  Using CUNY Login to access Zoom will not work at all for students whose primary affiliation is at those schools.  We are instructed to have them use the Zoom account provided by their primary institution.  This should work even for classes requiring authentication if the “CUNY Users” option above is used.
• We’ve had several faculty report challenges with having both the “Require authenticated users to join” and “CUNY Users” selected, and the meeting requires registration, as the registration page behaves a little differently than most people expect. The registration will only allow the address of a valid Zoom account to register. For Baruch users now this is the @login.cuny.edu address of the user, not their email address. It will not work for a cuny.edu email address that is not affiliated with a Zoom account (so your email address at @baruch.cuny.edu or @baruchmail.cuny.edu will not work for registration).

The Helpdesk is trying to resolve problems as quickly as possible with student authentication issues, including working with CIS to resolve issues beyond Baruch’s control. Following the guidance above should help reduce issues the BCTC Helpdesk has to deal with moving forward.