[ARCHIVED] Chatbots and Canvas: Fantastic Beasts and where to find them!!!

[d_jayasuriya]

Hi Guys,

Hope everyone is managing levelthreedom well!! I have several questions based on integrating chatbots into canvas.

1. Has anyone had any success integrating any outside web based chatbot like snatchbot into canvas other than using iframes?

2. Or better yet to Piazza?

Many thanks in advance.

[Chris_Hofer]

Good morning,  @d_jayasuriya  Welcome to the Canvas Community.  Thank you for posting your question.  Piazza is a LTI app that can be integrated into your Canvas environment.  Here's some information to get you started: Edu App Center: PIazza.  Follow the "Contact Piazza" link to get all the details on how to set up this LTI inside of your Canvas environment.  They recommend setting up the LTI at the account level instead of at the course level.  So, if you are not a Canvas administrator at your school, you will want to talk with the person who is (or your school's Online Learining/eLearning department) to see if they would be willing to install this app into your Canvas environment for you.

I hope this helps.  Please let Community members know if you have any other questions.  Stay safe, be well.

[jfox44]

Canvas Chatbot:

Yes and No. Yes it can be integrated, but it does so via embedding an iframe making it static in the page. No it can't be dynamically added 'pinned' to the lower right corner of the page like most typical chatbots. I wish there was a way, as I have a pretty good virtual assistant for my class where the student can ask general rubric questions, class questions, student specific Canvas grade questions (querying the Canvas API) such as 'what is my grade for assignment X', etc. But being static it is not very useful.

Piazza:

Same as Canvas. You don't have 'backend' access to the underlying HTML to insert the chatbot.

Unfortunately, unless they devise one (which would be nice for them to have a generic setup and allow the instructor/professor tailor to their needs) it most likely won't happen.

[Amanda_L_Albrig]

@jfox44 what application did you use to create the virtual assistant for your course? Does it integrate with the Canvas API to answer the questions you noted in your post? Currently investigating such a tool for use in courses. I'd appreciate any information you are willing to share.

Thank you for your time,

Amanda

[jfox44]

IBM Watson was used in prototyping the chatbot. Yes, I was able to integrate the Canvas API for access. Students would create an API key, input it to the chatbot to initialize, and then ask questions (query the Canvas API). It worked very well. The downfall, though, is the lack of custom integration into Canvas. To showcase the chatbot on Canvas required it to be placed in an iframe. Doing so meant it was a static part of a single page rendering it nearly useless.