Office365 LTI Phase 2

[GideonWilliams]

I would like to see FOUR features for Phase 2 of the integration, namely:

Ability to embed content directly from Office365 in the RCE

 The feature appear in Canvas Google Integration and the lack of progress with this continues to be a huge source of frustration.

Drag and Drop (and Open)

If this is not possible, how about tweeking the interface so you can just drag and drop (and play) Office files directly from the RCE like another well known VLE product. A huge time saver!

Development of integration to include resources that you are sharing

The feature appears in Canvas Google Integration and I have a huge worry as to what will happen to course content when a teacher leaves and their Office365 account is closed! Ideally the Office365 integration should link Canvas to Office365 Groups! 

Uploading any file

Currently the Office365 LTI only works with Office documents. How about extending this to pdf files, images and videos like OneDrive personal!

I personally would like to see an all round smoother integration with Office365 that did not require staff to consider the File space.

[jbrady2]

 @GideonWilliams  I too have found the Office365 integration in Canvas to be frustrating. Our institution IT department chooses to contract with Microsoft and provide the O365 products to all students, faculty, and staff, and it would be great if we could utilize those products to the fullest extent, especially when it comes to Canvas integration.  One thing I wanted to mention, as I am not certain if this might be part of your issue, is that I found out from our IT department that certain functions have been disabled in our O365 account that actually hinders seamless integration with Canvas.

[GideonWilliams]

Really interesting to hear that. Any suggestions as to which Functions were disabled?

cheers Gid.

[stuart_ryan]

 @jbrady2 , that is really interesting to note, I would also be curious also which disabled features you have run into that caused problems.

We are looking at the Office365 integration at the moment, so this would be invaluable to know.

Cheers,

Stuart

[jbrady2]

 @GideonWilliams ‌ and  @stuart_ryan 

One issue is that the way our institutional security is set-up—we do not currently have a common sign-in portal for all services—you do not automatically see embedded O365 documents unless already signed in to O365 as well as Canvas.Instead, the Canvas page displays a grey box with a sign-in button in the center.

To test how this feature works compared to the embed of a Google Doc, I was attempting to embed a Word doc into a Canvas page from OneDrive. During this test, I asked a Canvas admin to add one of my colleagues to the course as a student to see how an actual student would experience the document. The first hurdle was that the individual was asked to log into O365, but even when they did that, they still received an error message stating that the document could not be viewed (If I can find an old screen capture or reproduce the error, I will include an image later.).

When I questioned our IT department about this, they stated that because we are moving from OneDrive to SharePoint, they had disabled the sharing features of OneDrive. So, currently, I can embed O365 docs and see them myself, but they do not appear to anyone else. When I inquired about using SharePoint in the same manner, the way it was explained to me, made it appear as though the institution only wants to employ SharePoint as our intranet, for hosting department level documents and information that might need to be shared among departments, but that it will not be set-up with individual "folders" for every person in the college, so an individual would have to wade through a shared folder to find their individual files.

I spoke with the Microsoft reps while at InstructureCon, and I am hoping to start a conversation between them, myself, and our IT people to assist the responsible parties in understanding why this integration is useful for faculty and students, and hopefully find a way to make this happen.

So, depending upon how your institution plans to handle, or already handles, their O365 integration, the issues that I am facing may not even affect you.  If I find out any further information that might be useful, I will post it.

[GideonWilliams]

Jeff this is really valuable information that I will pass on to our IT team. The issues with seeing the gray sign in box resonates with me. Although these are early days, I don't believe we have a common sign-in portal as this is what we see too. Very frustrating indeed especially when, as you say, it just works for Google (and OneDrive personal).

I am glad you got to talk with some reps from Microsoft. I have been most disappointed with Microsoft's response to the integration and have felt stuck in the middle between them and Canvas for far too long. Did I hear mentioned that there was going to be some further work on the integration with Microsoft at InstructureCon? I am sure I saw it in tweeted picture.

Keep in touch and will let you know how we get on... 

[hasan_yildirim]

I did create a similar idea: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/10253-office365-adding-content-from-a-central-repository  ,let me take the opportunity for adding my idea into this one. the current  Office365 point out to an personal drive. well we all know that is a bad idea If you need any management about your documents.  also "the bug" of the user rights is not helping.  (this is not a bug 🙂 ) .

I would recommend for creating different solutions :
Wave 1

1. What: Make it possible for users to upload directy from MS OFFICE into CANVAS.  
    Why: The main focus of CANVAS is that you will create less documents and more interactive pages/assignements within the context of the course. But before we jump into the air and we all flip the classroom, consider that this will not happen in one day. So we need the right tools for getting there.
How: The right solution would be an office store plugin which give you the option to upload the document into CANVAS, like the assigments upload.

Here are some screenshot:

1. The user install's the plugin from the microsoft store. This can also be managed by your IT department so the plugin would be available on all managed devices.

2. The user makes connection with CANVAS by simply entering the url within the task-pane

3. Now the user can upload it into the course , here you will find a example.

maybe a smattter navigation for files is needed like you already know https://canvas.[yourinstitute].nl/files . a user must be able to select the folder , create folder and set maybe the usage rights options.

Well this would create a lot of happy people. With this option the place of the document is not relevant.

How do you feel about this?

[a1224143]

We did some testing a while ago and found that PowerPoints could be embedded in Canvas via a personal OneDrive account but not through the Enterprise Office accounts. This was probably because the personal account allowed the file to be set as public. Embedding is a key issue with online learning where we would like to provide a seamless leaning experience rather than a page of links to other files.

[GideonWilliams]

Hi Kym

Some staff have managed to embed PowerPoints from their OneDrive for Business accounts but it seems very hit and miss, took so many steps and had lots of strange issues with permissions (when it did not work)

Unsatisfactory from a users point of view as it should just happen and staff not worried about the Tech side of it or complicated Tech skills.

Just don't know or understand why things cannot be simpler...

[scher1sc]

It would really be good, if when trying to link to an OneDrive location, that if you have access to multiple shares (such as a shared team drive) you had the option to pick from more that just your personal files.

[GideonWilliams]

Which is possibly why a link to include Teams? 

https://community.canvaslms.com/people/Gideon.Williams

[pasquinit]

It would be nice to see the functionality with personal drives extend to sharepoint team drives in the Cloud Assignment tool. Our institution uses Sharepoint sites to host common curriculum documents, and teachers would like to post these without needing to copy first.

[johnsenp]

My teaching team would like the ability to directly access SharePoint from Canvas when uploading a Cloud Assignment.  Across our team, we share the same documents that are all stored in a SharePoint.  At this point, we all have to individually copy the desired file into our own individual OneDrives before uploading as a Cloud Assignment.  This creates multiple copies of the same document in different locations that all have to be individually managed.  It would be much more efficient if we could all upload the single shared document from our SharePoint.  

[GideonWilliams]

Yup, agree with you there. Access to a Shared location would massively reduce workload, encourage more sharing and remove any worries about when colleagues leave. Surely Microsoft would recognise this as good working practice?

[kmstewart]

So frustrated with the lack of embedding option!

[GideonWilliams]

Vote directly on these ideas on the Microsoft User Forum - Improvements to Office365 integration with Canvas LMS – Customer Feedback for Microsoft Office 365 

[KristinL]

Thank you for sharing this idea with the Instructure Community!

The Product Team reviewed all feature proposals recently, and unfortunately, this thread was identified as one that they would not be able to include in their current or future plans. While we appreciate your proposal, we also want to be transparent about the likelihood of something like this making it to production.

Thank you for collaborating, and we hope that you submit another idea in the future!