Will changing the account name break things?

[mpfaff1]

If we change the root account name, does anyone (especially if you're a developer) know what might go wrong? I'm particularly worried about various LTIs, since we've found one that seems to rely on that field to function. 

Backstory: I'm a Canvas admin, and was just informed our root account name has some trailing whitespace. 🤦‍ We found out because one of our LTIs (Pearson MyLab) apparently breaks certain assignments when there's extra whitespace. (I was able to confirm that's causing the issue in our beta environment.)

If one LTI uses the name field, couldn't others use it too?

Also if you sympathize, please vote for my recent idea to have Canvas check for + remove whitespace.

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi there, @mpfaff1 …

Just a thought, but have you tested out trying to remove that extra space from your account name within your school’s “test” or “beta” environment?  The “test” environment might be a great way to start … if you’ve not done so yet.  That way, you’re not disturbing anything in your school’s main “production” environment.  This is just a thought, and I could be totally wrong about this, but removing the space in the name might be perfectly fine.  I don’t think the account ID number (shown in the URL of the account) would change.  So, you might be ok.  Again, you might want to do this in your school’s “test” environment just to be sure.

• What is the Canvas test environment?
• How do I access the Canvas test environment as an admin?

Maybe other will chime in here, too.  (I’m certainly happy to be wrong on any of the above.) Hope this might be of some help to you.

[mpfaff1]

Thanks, @Chris_Hofer! I did run it in beta, and some of the LTIs simply don't work in that environment. I imagine test functions similar to beta? But maybe that's an incorrect assumption.

I will try it on test before we do anything; there's something wrong with our test environment at the moment (it's not recognizing my account), so I haven't gotten around to trying that yet.

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi @mpfaff1 …

Yes, there are similarities between “test” and “beta”, but you might want to read through the link I gave you in my earlier response about the “test” environment and then compare it to this Guide:

What is the Canvas beta environment?

[KathyPalm]

I'm very curious how it went, were you able to remove that space okay?

We bought a second Canvas environment to use as a Dev environment as there are several things we cannot fully test in the standard beta/test environments. Mainly this is used for our integrations/LTIs. We don't have a lot set up there yet, but it's nice to be able to test something in our Dev environment and feel confident in the results.