Using the API to find which LTI tool is being used?

[bertscjn1]

As the title says, I am beginning to brainstorm the building of a report for courses that use the LTI tools that are embedded into our instance. I looked over the API documentation but it doesn't look like the LTI API will do exactly what I'm looking for. Has anyone tackled this, or know if this is even possible? I've even pulled course data but am not really seeing anything the specifically states in the JSON that it's an LTI tool. 

[JamesSekcienski]

@bertscjn1 

This type of report is one that I've seen requested for a long time in the Community.  When building the report based on APIs you will need to define what usage you care about and keep in mind that some usage is easier to track than others and may vary based on the LTI itself.  Here are some examples:

• Check what tools are installed and where
  • This is available through the account level report and the External Tools API 
  • Unfortunately, this only lets you know where it is installed and doesn't provide any details on it actually being used.
• Check what tools are enabled on the course navigation
  • This is available through the Tabs API
  • You won't know if users are actually clicking the course link through this though.
  • Be cautious about how you analyze the "usage" of this when it comes to tools that are defaulted to be enabled on the course navigation.
• Check what tools are used as an external tool submission type for assignments
  • This is available through the Assignments API
• Check what tools are linked in modules
  • This is available through the Modules API

If you use LockDown Browser or a similar tool, you may also be able to determine this information through the Quizzes API.  I would need to test if the information is provided through the New Quizzes API since I haven't tried it out yet. Nonetheless, I believe I was able to find some of the LockDown Browser information for New Quizzes through the Assignments API response.

If you are using the Turnitin Plagiarism Framework, someone shared a solution for how to check if it is enabled on an assignment: Listing Canvas Plagiarism Framework Assignments 

Additional usage like embedded content may be possible to discover depending on how the LTI embeds the content, but it will take your reports significantly longer to run in order to analyze all the areas where content could be embedded from an LTI (announcements, discussions, pages, assignments, quiz questions).

When I built a report, I was inspired by what @nardell shared in Find external tool usage in course shells.  Some users also suggest using Canvas Data for this type of report.  I saw a comment from @robotcars on the post with some example SQL queries, but these may need to be updated for Canvas Data 2. 

[agschmid]

@bertscjn1 Years ago I used the API to find which LTI tools were used in a course, then switched to CD1 and now I'm using CD2. I built a Tableau report with several filters:

• Type of course: sis, non-sis or all
• State of the course: published, unpublished or all

How tools are included:

• Navigation: if a tool is visible on the navigation, then it is counted
• Assignment: if the assignment contains the launch URL for a given tool and is published, it is counted
• Modules: if the module item contains the launch URL for a given tool and is published, it is counted

Since there are course-level placements and account-level placements, and the names for a given tool at times vary, I use a case statement and regex to parse the URL.

There are some quirks with CD2 when pulling the data, and I documented what I used in CD1, then figured out how to find that in CD2, with example results for each query in CD2 for specific data before doing any joins.

If you're interested in using CD2 for this information, I can write up something that explains what to look for in the tables and fields.

[agschmid · Accepted solution]

I created a blog post describing my method of retrieving external tools used in courses: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Developers-Group/CD2-An-Example-for-Retrieving-External-To...

[bertscjn1]

Thanks for this. I'm looking it over now and it looks very promising!