Possible to manually configure LTI content-item in Canvas?

[rodney1]

Hello everyone,

I have developed a web app that supports LTI 1.0, and has been successfully used by customers on Blackboard and Moodle LMS platforms for many years.  Recently one of our customers has decided to move to Canvas, so we are exploring Canvas LTI support.

We don't currently support LTI 1.0 content-item Message 1.0.  (Introduction to LTI Content-Item Message 1.0 | IMS Global Learning Consortium )   The process our customers follow at moment is: login to our app (typically in a separate window), open the resource they are interested in (course, folder, document) and copy LTI link from sharing options.  Moodle and Blackboard allow URLs to be pasted into an external tool link - so they would just create a new external link and paste the URL in.  As long as the link being pasted is below the endpoint (e.g. domain.com/api/lti) then the link will be accepted.

When I try the above approach in Canvas - on launching Canvas complains the link is invalid/unrecognised.

It may be (hopefully!) there is some simple step I am missing here.  Can someone more knowledgeable confirm how to go about manually configuring a LTI content-item.  Assume that I have successfully loaded the LTI tool into the course and am able to load my tool to default page.  What I am looking is to navigate to a content-item (e.g. a folder or file within my tool, each of which has it's own LTI link below the same endpoint)

It may be that I have to press on immediately with adding content-item message 1.0 support, but would be good to know if there is any work around in the meantime.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

~ Rodney

[rodney1 · Accepted solution]

Hi everyone,

Further to my post above, and after a lot of playing around, I have resolved my issue. 

The issue is how the field LTI Launch URL is configured when setting up the LTI tool: turns out it must NOT include https://

From XML config, this is correct form:

<blti:launch_url> use.domain.com/api/lti/open </blti:launch_url>

In Eduappcentre, you should be careful of configuration for "LTI Launch URL" field.  

If you had instead set launch_url to start with https://  (e.g. something like: https://use.domain.com/api/lti/open) Canvas allowed the tool to be launched from the navigation area, but rejects any content tool URLs you added in a Module ( In Modules:  "+" -> select: External Tool -> select your tool -> paste in resource link for your tool) e.g. if you tried to launch: https://use.domain.com/api/lti/open/fa69d890-b7af-11e7-0000-000000000000 Canvas throws error "Couldn't find any valid settings for this link".

As soon as I changed the LTI launch value in the tool XML to not start with HTTPS:// and re-add the tool to Canvas course, all was well.

I hope this helps someone else avoid wasted hours on this issue.

~ Rodney