Feature Q&A: Canvas Deploy Notes (2023-03-01)

[InstContentTeam]

Looking to discuss these features from the 2023-03-01 Deploy Notes? Post a reply and start a conversation!

Feature Options

• Assignments: LTI Deep Linking Line Items Default Status Update [Removed as of 2023-03-24]

Other Updates

• Rich Content Editor: RCE Supports Pasting and the Drag and Drop of Content

ADD FEEDBACK FOR THESE FEATURES IN Q&A TOPIC

• This topic is for feature discussion only—Please share use cases, best practices, questions, clarifications, etc. regarding this feature.
• Please thread replies as possible to keep posts organized. This will help everyone to track discussions and to participate.

ADDITIONAL FEEDBACK—WHERE TO POST IDEA SUGGESTIONS AND SUBMIT BUG REPORTS

• Idea requests for the Product Team to consider should be submitted in ideas.canvaslms.com . This is the best way to ask for additional or alternative functionality than what is included in the release. Linking to the related idea here so others can find it is encouraged!
• Bug reports should be submitted to Canvas Support. This way, cases can be connected and uniform updates can be provided to those involved. Bugs will not be triaged in this thread

[jonna_radegard]

Can anyone provide a concrete example of how this  LTI deep likning works and is useful please?

[AlexisNast]

Hi Jonna!

Deep Linking enables LTI 1.3 tools (the most up to date specification) to link specific content to an assignment. So instead of just linking a textbook, for example, you can link a specific chapter or assignment. I hope that helps!

Alexis Nast

Product Manager

[audra_agnelly]

"In Account Settings, locate the LTI Deep Linking Line Items on Assignment edit page feature option." This sounds like admins will need to enable Deep Linking Line Items. Since it doesn't default to enabled, I assume there are reasons why an institution might not want to enable this feature. What do we need to consider when deciding whether or not to enable this feature option?

[AlexisNast]

Hi Audra!

We're offering this as a feature flag so that if there are any issues with the rollout we can quickly revert back. Because there is such a wide variety of tools on the market we aren't able to test with every single tool, so it is possible unforeseen issues will occur (though we do test thoroughly and this shouldn't happen often!) After a month of this being available for schools to test out, we will turn it on for everyone if no problems are identified. It's up to you if you turn it on during the trial period, but my recommendation would be to do so in order to identify any potential issues as soon as possible so we can resolve them for you. I hope this helps!

Alexis Nast

Product Manager

[mzimmerman]

Hi @AlexisNast 

We found that the LTI Deep-linking feature option was enabled by default on our instance, even though the release notes say that enforcement would not be until 4-15-2023?

We only discovered this after finding that assignments created from video quizzes in our video streaming server (YuJa) were having their titles and descriptions in Canvas overwritten by the title of the source video in YuJa, then trying to figure out what had changed on the system.  Sure enough, the LTI Deep-linking feature option was unexpectedly enabled, and disabling it reverted the external tool assignment creation back to its old behavior...

I also see that this feature option is not showing up on the test server at all, only on the beta server.

[AlexisNast]

@mzimmerman 

My apologies for the unexpected behavior - please make sure to submit a ticket (or have YuJa submit a ticket to our Partner Support team) so we can investigate the cause of this issue as this feature will be enforced in the future. This release note saying that the default status would be updated was intended to indicate that the default status of the flag would be set to on, my apologies if that was not clear. It is not yet enforced, as you were able to turn it off - when we enforce it that option will be removed and this will become a permanent feature of Canvas.

My apologies on missing turning the feature on in Test - I have remedied that now.

[mzimmerman]

Hi @AlexisNast 

I opened a ticket reporting the problem, #09633372

[AlexisNast]

This feature has been defaulted to off for now. Since turning the feature on by default, several tools determined that they were sending data at inappropriate times and relying on Canvas to ignore that data rather than defining when it was appropriate to update the values themselves. We will coordinate with the tools to determine when they have implemented fixes so that this feature can be turned back on. As before, admins are encouraged to turn the feature flag on in Settings to test whether any of their tools are impacted, and let impacted tools know so that they can remedy the problem in a timely fashion. Ultimately this feature moves us into better compliance with the LTI specification and will improve the ability to keep information in sync between LTI Tools and Canvas, and we look forward to moving ahead with it once tools are ready.