How do I tell Canvas not to create an external tool during a cartridge import?

[dan_hammari]

When I import an LTI thin common cartridge (.imscc), Canvas wants to generate an external LTI app tool in my course so the LTI links will always have an external LTI app that can be used to access those links. The post-import issues warning then alerts the user that the newly-created external LTI app tool needs to finish being configured before the LTI links can be accessed. While this is ostensibly a helpful feature, I find that most users disregard the tiny import warning badge and do not expect an external LTI app tool to be automatically created at the course level. Indeed, most of the startup issues that I deal with involve Canvas administrators getting a message that their LTI credentials are invalid when they try to consume the LTI links they just imported. This is because the course-level external LTI app tool has the default value of "fake" as its consumer key, and Canvas is overriding any account-level external tool configurations with the auto-generated course-level version of the tool. I end up having to tell these Canvas administrators that they need to search the course-level external tools and delete any auto-generated LTI tools that have a consumer key value of "fake."

It appears that Canvas is supposed to try to match the thin common cartridge being imported against any external LTI app tools that may already exist. However, this matching process rarely finds the external LTI app tool that a Canvas administrator already created at the account level. I did find this bug report from the Canvas forum in GitHub:

Importing Common Cartridge w/ LTI Links never match existing External LTI Apps · Issue #1087 · instr... 

I will have to try out the recommendation and see if removing the launch URL from the account-level configuration will allow Canvas to match my cartridge to its tool and prevent a dummy external LTI app tool from being created at the account level.

In the meanwhile, I just had a Canvas administrator contact me and complain that not only did importing a cartridge ignore the account-level external LTI app that he already created, but it created an additional course-level external LTI app tool for every single LTI link in the cartridge he imported. I sure hope this is a bug from the most recent version of the cartridge import tool and not an indication of the direction that Canvas wants to go with its import process. In the meanwhile, is there a way to batch delete all of those external LTI app tools that Canvas so generously created when it imported the cartridge?

[James]

 @dan_hammari ,

I don't have an answer for you, but this sounds related to a problem I had last week that I spent way too much time trying to diagnose. I tried to import an Edfinity course following their instructions. When I contacted support, they took a couple of days to come back with that they couldn't find anything wrong, but I should feel solace in that it works flawlessly for hundreds of other institutions. I also got the sense I wasn't as important once they knew how small a school we were.

The import process also ignored the Account level LTI I had and created their own. But instead of creating Assignments as external tools, it created External URLs which linked to the assignments but provided no potential for grade passback.

I will see if I can glean something from the GitHub ticket you referred to.

Thank you.