How to Track External App Usage?

Jump to solution
molshausen
Community Explorer

My boss and I are looking for ways to audit the list of apps that have been integrated at the account level. Ideally, we'd be able to check how often they are used as links or external tools for assignments at the course level. Is there a data-driven approach to doing this?

My coding skills are minimal, but I have time to learn the necessary tools if this can't really be done in something like Excel.

Labels (2)
0 Likes
1 Solution
stimme
Community Contributor

With Canvas Data, you could create a report for external tool assignments & external tool module links. You can download the files from the Canvas Data Portal link in the account admin tab. The files you need are assignment_dim, course_dim, external_tool_activation_dim, and module_item_dim (account_dim and enrollment_term_dim are often also helpful to aggregate by sub-account or term). Once you get these files and expand them, you could import them as sheets in Excel.

For assignment_dim, you can use the values in the external_tool_id column for VLOOKUP on the external_tool_activation_dim table finding in the id column and returning from the name column.

For module_item_dim, you can use the same approach by filtering down to the ContextExternalTool type of items and looking up the url values.

I hope this makes sense. Your note about coding skills made me think giving SQL queries would be less helpful than recommending Excel techniques. Good luck!

View solution in original post