What is Canvas Data Services?

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Canvas Data Services provides admins with optimized access to their data for reporting and queries. Customers can combine their Canvas Data with data from other trusted institutions, as well as other key systems across campus such as a student information system (SIS).

Canvas Data Admins can download flat files from Amazon S3 or, if your institution pays for Amazon Redshift, Admins can view files hosted in an Amazon Redshift data warehouse. The data will be an extracted and transformed version of an institution's Canvas activity and can be accessed using any open database connectivity (ODBC) analytics tool to generate custom data visualization and reports.

‬To enable Canvas Data, please contact your Customer Success Manager.

Canvas Data Exports

Canvas Data parses and aggregates over 280 million rows of Canvas data generated daily and exports them as tab delimited (.txt) flat files. Files are uploaded to Amazon S3 for customers to download.

Canvas Data flat files are available to all Canvas customers at no cost. Canvas Data offers a paid service for Redshift available through the Professional Services team. Contact your Customer Success Manager for details.

The Canvas Data Admin for an institution must be a Canvas admin. The Canvas Data Admin must understand data governance procedures and policies for the institution and also have enough technical proficiency to understand IP address ranges and database connection strings.

Canvas Data Portal

From the Canvas Data Portal, admins can access flat files, manage other Canvas Data users, and view and generate key credentials.

For institutions with a hosted account, admins can also manage access to Redshift and the IP Address Allowlist. Files are also available in the institution's Redshift database.

Canvas Data Services

As an admin, you may choose to install Canvas Data Services in your account. Canvas Data services allows you to configure data streams to access Live Events data from Canvas. Data stream configuration requires an Amazon SQS or HTTPS URL.

Canvas Data Files

Admins can use Canvas Data schemas and APIs to get insight on topics such as accreditation, improving course design, assessing student engagements, and enabling student intervention.

As part of the Canvas Data Portal, the Canvas Data schema includes documentation that explains all the table data that is exported from Canvas. Relevant files can be compared and used to answer questions such as:

• ‪Which departments/courses/teachers are fully adopting the LMS tool?
• ‪What makes a successful department/course/instructor?
• ‪Which courses are being retaken?
• ‪How can our institution improve student retention?
• ‪Which learning objects are actually used by students?
• ‪How much time do successful students spend on the course?
• ‪When should an instructor intervene with a student?
• ‪What courses fit a student’s learning style?
• ‪How are students doing in the course (current and historical)?
• How can students plan to be more effective?

ODBC Analytics Tools

Canvas Data files can be used to create visual analysis using queries and reports in ODBC analytics tools. Common tools include Excel (using Amazon Redshift), Tableau, R, and SQL Workbench/J. Most other ODBC and Java database connectivity (JDBC) PostgresSQL clients should support the data, but pgAdmin is not supported.