Help with Integrating Populi and Canvas

[mames]

Hello!

I'm an instructional technologist who's been tasked with integrating Populi and Canvas at our small University here in Rwanda. It's not my skill set and have not been able to do it. Does anyone know where I can get some help with this? I'd like to find someone with experience integrating systems that can either provide advice on how to do this or preform the integration.

Thanks

[EvanDonovan]

Have you been able to figure this out yet? I may be able to give you some advice. I haven't been able to figure out the gradebook sync yet, but I have been able to get the basic sync to work.

[EvanDonovan]

As an update, I have figured out the gradebook sync now. So I could probably walk you through this if you are still stuck on it.

[AdamWilson]

We are just starting to use Populi and I am unsuccessfully trying to figure out the integration.

Populi has this help article, Canvas Integration – Populi Knowledge Base (populiweb.com), but the integration setup doesn't match what I see in Canvas, and my guesses didn't work.

I think I want to go to https://[mydomain].instructure.com/accounts/1/developer_keys and add an API developer key for Populi, but I left most of the fields blank as I was unsure what the correct value might be.

I then tried to use the resulting key in Populi, but the Test button tells me that "An error occured accessing the Canvas LMS API. Invalid access token."

[EvanDonovan · Accepted solution]

Hi Adam,

This part is not that well documented in Populi.

You need to go to the https://cityvision.instructure.com/profile/settings for the user that you want to use for the import.

Then on that page, scroll to the Approved Integrations section and click the + Access Token button.

Create an access token, and copy it down.

Then copy this access token into the place for the token in Populi. Try the test again, and it should work.

After the test works, I recommend setting the sync to be manual, on a course-by-course basis. Then go to the course settings in Populi for a single course, change LMS Sync to Canvas, then go back to the integrations page and click the button to do the sync.

Note that the sync will sync across all users enrolled in the course to Canvas, so if it is a live course, be prepared for that. But the users will not receive an email notification from Canvas, like they would if you added them manually.

Since this is just a test at first, you may want to start by syncing over a test course. But I would suggest having a test faculty and test student in the course so you can test that part works as well.

You can go to the Reporting link (slightly below Integrations on the Populi Account tab) to see spreadsheets of what is sent over to Canvas. On the Canvas side, you can see the data under SIS Import in the Admin section.

Let me know how this works for you, and if you have any other questions after this step. I also have gotten the SAML (single sign-on) and grade sync working. Of those, the SAML was definitely the hardest.

[EvanDonovan]

If you have issues with the grade sync, please note this other forum post that I made: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Admin-Discussion/Syncing-grades-from-Canvas-to-Populi/m-p/...

However, I believe these issues could be avoided if you used a Canvas Admin user for your SIS integration - as long as the Admin user had the SIS Import permissions. I don't remember whether Admin users have those by default.

I think the reasons Canvas had said not to use an Admin user for SIS imports are 1) principle of least privilege - Admin users can do the most things, so if they have a token, it could be more damaging if it were leaked; 2) having a dedicated SIS import user makes it easier to have an audit trail on what the SIS import is doing, since it's not the same as your regular Admin user.

However, it does make it a little harder to debug, since the SIS Import user also needs to have the permissions to do the grade sync. But if you add the ones related to Users, Grades, and Courses (maybe just the viewing ones), as I said in that post, you should probably be fine, if you choose to use a different user than your Admin user.

So that leaves the SAML - let me know if you want to try that & have issues getting that to work.

[EvanDonovan]

Also, here is the Canvas documentation on this: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Admin-Guide/How-do-I-manage-API-access-tokens-as-an-admin/ta-p/89

[EvanDonovan]

Hi Adam, have you gotten this working yet?

If so, can you accept my response as a solution, so that it will come up as solved if people look for this?

If you haven't, send me a private message on the Canvas Community, and I may be able to help you a bit more specifically.