Canvas + Microsoft Upcoming LTI Integrations

[rlufkin]

[2021-06-09 Update] The training materials should now be live here! We've also added an FAQ that we will continue to update and more info can be found on the Microsoft partner page! 

In October 2020, Instructure and Microsoft jointly announced a deepening of our partnership, building on the integration of Microsoft Immeresive Reader, we would be making Teams Meeting available as a default conferencing tool within Canvas LMS. At its core, this provides the ability for educators to easily create a Teams Meeting, for free, within Canvas LMS. In addition, new LTI integrations with Microsoft Teams, Teams Meeting LTI, and OneDrive LTI will offer deeper solutions for synchronous collaboration.

Below we’ve outlined the first round of exciting features this partnership will deliver, timelines for their roll-out, and a roadmap for preparing in advance.  

What You Can Do Today

Thanks to the Instructure and Microsoft partnership, there are already a number of things you can do with Microsoft solutions in Canvas. Microsoft Immersive Reader, for instance, is available on all published Pages within Canvas LMS. For more information on using IR in Canvas, a user guide and admin guide are available.  

What’s Coming Soon

We are running closed beta programs with all of the following LTI integrations and will be releasing them collectively in GA on August 1st 2021. 

OneDrive LTI app

The OneDrive LTI app will help educators and students have a more modern OneDrive experience, including:

• Integrates with Canvas assignment, collaboration, and grading workflows
• Modern OneDrive file picker UX
• Updated document viewers and editors (WXP now, expand type support over time)
• Multiple OneDrive account support (personal, organizational)
• OneNote Class Notebooks and Flipgrid with LTI support available

Teams Meetings LTI app

The improved Teams Meetings LTI app will help educators and students more easily integrate class meetings into their course work. Improvements include:

• Schedule individual or recurring meetings within the course in Canvas and set meeting options (based on tenant policies)
• View past & upcoming meetings within the Canvas course calendar
• Join or edit the details of a Teams meeting from the Canvas course (deep link into Teams)
• Access previous meeting artifacts within the Canvas course, including chat, recordings, transcripts, and attendance reports

Class Teams LTI app

With the new Class Teams LTI app, educators and students will be able to more easily navigate seamlessly between Teams and their course in Canvas. Initial capabilities will include:

• Allow an educator to create a Class Team with the proper user roles within a Canvas course based on the enrollment roster of the course in Canvas
• Respect Teams admin & Canvas privacy policies during Class Team creation
• After creating the Class Team, educators and students can access the Team from within the Canvas course or Teams
• Support across desktop, mobile and web platforms

Preparing for Deeper Integration

The above LTI tools will be generally available on August 1, 2021.

We know this may be a condensed timeframe for some institutions preparing for back to school. To that end, we’ve outlined a roadmap to help schools prepare for a smooth and expedited rollout:  

Step 1) Integration Set Up
May 1 - May 31
All schools will need a Microsoft EDU license to enable the Microsoft LTI integrations. The first step in the process is for administrators to sign up for a license and you’ll be contacted by a member of the Microsoft team to get the ball rolling!

• Ensure your institution is set up with Microsoft EDU license
• Walk-through tenant configuration
• Dedicated time for administrators to ask Microsoft any questions

Step 2) Educator Training 
June 1 - July 31 
Canvas and Microsoft are delivering onboarding services, at no additional cost, designed to help you prepare for the rollout and get your teachers up and running in consideration of our compressed timeline. Access the training resources.   

Step 3) Product GA & Installation
August 1
Admins install LTIs for institution

• OneDrive LTI (avail July 1)
• Class Teams LTI  (avail July 15)
• Teams Meetings LTI (avail Aug 1)

[rake_9]

@kirsten_ryall - Looking at the whole page from which you took the screenshot, it looks like there are a number of links that seem similar.  My guess is that someone got sloppy with their screenshot and took an image from the instance where they've been doing testing and exploration rather than one specifically set up to look like what an instructor could expect to see.

[rake_9]

@Katrina-Hess and maybe @rlufkin 

I had asked earlier about what happens to Teams site created via this integration after the end of the semester. My Microsoft admin has concerns about an over-abundace of Teams components cluttering his system. I also have questions about whether instructors can make choices about keeping these Teams active or closing them, depending on their expectations of on-going interaction.

I had also asked a question about the potential for FlipGrid to be something we could set up at our top-level Canvas account and let instructors opt-in to using it without needing permission to actually install an integration.

[joe_fahs]

@rlufkin 

Under Preparing for Deeper Integration on this page there is the section

Step 3) Product GA & Installation August 1
Admins install LTIs for institution

OneDrive LTI (avail July 1)
Class Teams LTI (avail July 15)
Teams Meetings LTI (avail Aug 1)

Do you have any update on when Canvas Admins can install the OneDrive LTI?

Thank you,

Joe

[crafte]

This page Partner Listing: Microsoft Education provides more information. An update was posted yesterday. The page also provides some click-through demos for instructors as well as information for admins.

[GideonWilliams]

Great "sleuthing" from @crafte to find the source of the videos. Need to get the link on the main thread.

Watched all of them and lots to be very excited by. Some HUGE improvements and developments to the integration.

Some questions I could not find answers to from the video:

• Does embedding include access to Immersive Reader? - this is very important indeed!!
• Has the integration extended beyond integrating files from your own OneDrive account eg Shared files?

[rlufkin]

@joe_fahs I was out of the office this week, and it looks like @crafte already responded, but yep, the delivery is slightly delayed. The team is posting updates here and will be reaching out as soon as we can being implementations. 

@rake_9 I don;t have answers for that yet but let me talk to Katrina and the MSFT team and see what I can find!

[dave_bull]

Anyone got this to work yet?

I can get the Microsoft Teams button to appear but when I click on it I get a message telling me that:

"It looks like your account Dave.Bull@icmp.ac.uk is not set up to use Teams. Did you mean to sign in with a different Microsoft account?"

even though I am already signed into Teams...

[joe_fahs]

Hi @rlufkin 

Thanks for sharing the July 16 update on the Class Teams LTI!

Do you have any updates on the status of the OneDrive LTI?

The Use Microsoft OneDrive LTI with Canvas configuration on this page https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/lti/?view=o365-worldwide#onedrive-lti-with-canvas is not working. 

Joe Fahs

[lrattray]

What kind of analytics will we be able to get with the Teams Meetings LTI?

[erinhmcmillan]

HI, all,

A lot of these questions are going to be answered by Microsoft, so please check out the resources that they've provided and reach out to their teams for additional assistance.

Thanks!

Erin

[SamanthaFisher]

Hi everyone, my name is Samantha and I am the lead at Microsoft for the new LTI integrations we are creating with Canvas. I regularly post updates on the Microsoft partner page: Partner Listing: Microsoft Education - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com). I see that there are a lot of comments here on this post - feel free to post your unanswered question on the partner page or @ mention me here. We are excited to get your questions answered and work with you all!

[joe_fahs]

Hi @SamanthaFisher 

I do not think we can post questions on the partner page. 

Thanks for sharing the July 16 update on the Class Teams LTI.

Do you have any updates on the status of the OneDrive LTI?

The Use Microsoft OneDrive LTI with Canvas configuration link on this page https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/lti/?view=o365-worldwide#onedrive-lti-with-canvas is not working. 

Thank you,

Joe

[joe_fahs]

@SamanthaFisher 

In reference to the page Use Microsoft Teams classes with Canvas is it required to have SDS installed at all? We already have roster synchronization in Canvas with our SIS. Assuming that the Class Teams LTI will auto-sync with the Canvas course roster?

Thank you,

Joe

[SamanthaFisher]

Hi @joe_fahs -

I will post an update shortly on the OneDrive LTI app on the partner page, but it is delayed in its release plan. We no longer expect it to wide release in the first week of August, although we are actively inviting US customers to participate in the ongoing OneDrive private preview. We are working very hard on the Microsoft side to bring it to all of the customers who have signed up on the form, and we will keep you all posted when we know more about delivery dates.

To answer your other questions, it is not required to use SDS to use the new integration. All of the syncing happens between the Canvas course and Teams.

[SamanthaFisher]

@dave_bull On the Microsoft side, the front end of the app is going through a phased roll out. It won't be fully available to all customers until Friday, July 23rd. It is fully available however on the Canvas side, which is why you're seeing this. If you try after Friday, the Teams LTI should work fine. There is also no need to reinstall or redo the sync - the backend changes should all be reflected already. Let me know if you still have issues after Friday and we can get you in touch with the right people at Microsoft. 

[SamanthaFisher]

@rake_9 Thanks for your questions.

For the Teams integrations, there is no automatic cleanup of Teams when the Canvas course closes. Educators, course admins, or course designers are owners of Teams and can archive or delete Teams when the course is over.

We don't have any current plans to change things in the FlipGrid LTI, but we are always open to feedback to help us prioritize our roadmap. Let me know if you have other requests for how the Flipgrid LTI should behave in Canvas.

[dave_bull]

@SamanthaFisher Everything is working now, everything is wonderful!

[CanvasJackie]

@SamanthaFisher with the new Teams integration, if a course has sections will a team be created for the whole course or will there be a team for each section? Note, each section would be best.

Also, is this integration currently working if enabled by a school/district?

 Thanks! 

[guilera]

@SamanthaFisher - any restrictions for testing the integrations on Canvas Beta or Canvas Test prior to adding to Canvas Production.

We are live on Canvas August 2021 for the first time (transitioning from another LMS) and want to be sure everything is working as intended,

[kirsten_ryall]

We'd love to hear more about how Class Teams LTI will interact with sections in a course. That will most likely be a big ticket item for us. Also interested to hear whether it will interact with groups as well. 

[niallCIT20]

@kirsten_ryall according to what I have read here on the requirements and limitations. It states 'The Class Teams LTI does not support syncing sections or groups; it creates one Team for the Canvas course.' 

From this it would appear like it won't be an option. Which would be an issue for ourselves. But I would be happy to be corrected in this instance.

[prettey]

Hi,

Would I be right (in theory of course) that once the roster has synched with Teams that the tutor can then create sub channels and the allocate students to them. I'm kind if thinking that Teams own tool set has everything that is required to perform the groupings?

[SamanthaFisher]

@CanvasJackie, @kirsten_ryall, @niallCIT20 -

Thank you all for your questions! I figured I'd combine answers into one comment since you are all interested in learning more about sections/groups. For version 1, the Teams integration is a course level placement. This means that it creates 1 team per course and doesn't take into account sections or groups. Educators can manually create private channels for each section/group in their course in the Team, so that students can work together in a private space with their section/group mates.

We are actively looking for feedback on how to improve the integration for future versions, and how to handle sections/groups. We have heard diverse feedback around schools wanting a Team per section, or schools wanting one team with private channels for each section, or other configurations. We are still trying to assess the best way forward! Please let us know any and all feedback you have. 

[SamanthaFisher]

@guilera thank you for your question! The new Teams integration does not work in Canvas test environments, but does work in Canvas beta environments. For testing, you can also install it in only specific courses or in a sub account of your main Canvas account as well. Let me know if you have any questions about the options above!

[SamanthaFisher]

@prettey Yes you are correct! Educators can create private channels or just regular channels and control membership to those channels. Teams has its own grouping mechanisms that can absolutely be used with the new integration. Let me know if you have any other questions!

[kirsten_ryall]

@SamanthaFisher thank you for confirming the section query for us. Much appreciated. Where possible, we like to avoid 'manual' anything. We have some crazy big courses, that also have crazy big numbers of sections that generally represent 'tutorials'. We'll take a look at the Class Teams LTI in more detail in the next month or so, and also re-validate requirements from our educators. Happy to share these with you and/or your team at some stage. Thanks again.

[dave_bull]

@SamanthaFisher 

Do you want feedback here?

If so, here are mine...

Syncing to include the Sections in the Canvas Module.

Allow us to select which sort of Team we want (we don't use Teams for assignments and/or grades so the inclusion of them in the Team will only lead to confusion)

More control over the Team configuration, as in templates so the MS Teams look similar to the Canvas look and feel

More than one Team per Canvas module if possible, viewable in Canvas by Sections if possible

There are a lot more from various members of staff involved but these are the main ones.

[erik_gustafson]

@SamanthaFisher ,

I enabled the Class Teams LTI, and I noticed that it is enabled in Course Navigation by default. Is there a way to make it hidden in Course Navigation unless an instructor wants to use it and has it visible?

[EveWhitelaw]

Hi @SamanthaFisher 

I note the update on the OneDrive LTI delay. It was our understanding that the conferencing/meeting application would come before the OneDrive integration - is this still the case?

Additionally, we are trying to understand if the Canvas and Teams calendar will automatically synchronize with one another in real time? 

Thanks,
Eve  

[joe_fahs]

Hi @SamanthaFisher 

Adding to @erik_gustafson 's comment

We would like to hide by default the Microsoft Teams LTI  app in course navigation. Some instructors may not want it on their menu. Secondly, we can message instructors to turn on syncing in Settings > Integrations for the course before they enable the app in navigation. Otherwise, they will get this message, which is confusing to everyone.

You have not been added to a team on this course yet.
Your IT administrator needs to create a team, add you as a member and link it to your course on your behalf. Try contacting your IT administrator for help. 

Thanks,

Joe

[MattHanes]

@erik_gustafson , are you familiar with using the API? I have had to do this with LTIs in the past. You can do a simple call in your web browser searching for the ID of the LTI tool. So something like this would search for an LTI called "teams"

https://yourinstitution.instructure.com/api/v1/accounts/1/external_tools?search_term=teams 

Then you would use that ID to do a PUT call in postman or curl to disable it by default. So if the ID was 7987 then you would do something like this in Postman

I don't think that is retroactive but all new courses would have it disabled by default. 

[dave_bull]

@joe_fahs It would be easier to just go into the module Settings > Navigation and either disable or hide the button there?

[erik_gustafson]

@MattHanes ,

Yes, I am familiar with the API. I suppose I could give that a try. I wasn't sure if that setting would be editable since it was installed via an Inherited Developer Key by ClientID or not. 

[MattHanes]

@erik_gustafson Let us know if it works! I think I've done it with one of the newer LTIs like that but I can't remember.

[erik_gustafson]

@MattHanes ,

Success! I was able to disable the LTI in course navigation by default using the method you described above. The specific endpoint I used is below using a PUT command.

https://xxxxx.instructure.com/api/v1/accounts/account_id/external_tools/tool_id?course_navigation[default]=disabled 

You don't have to search for the tool id. You can simply go into a course and access the Teams tab in course navigation and grab the tool id from the URL in your browser.

You also need your root account id where the LTI is installed and that is it. Once you run this, it will hid Teams by default in Course Navigation. 

[SamanthaFisher]

@kirsten_ryall happy to help! Yes, please reach back out in the future if you have more feedback or need any additional help once you've evaluated the app further. I'm happy to connect you to our LTI specialist team!

[SamanthaFisher]

Thank you for the feedback @dave_bull! We definitely hear the need for sections to map to Teams, and that is excellent feedback I'll pass along to the engineering team. For Class Teams created through the LTI, Teams Assignments and Grades should be turned off by default to avoid any confusion with Canvas Assignments. If this isn't happening in your instance, let me know and we can look into it. I'll also be posting a product survey in a month or so to get more feedback on the next features we should build for the integrations so I'll invite you to fill that out too with all this great feedback!

[SamanthaFisher]

@erik_gustafson and @joe_fahs thank you for your inquiry about hiding LTIs in the course nav in Canvas. Instructors can certainly hide Microsoft Teams in settings in the course, but there are also ways to do this in batch. The Canvas team can provide some more clarity here! @rlufkin or @Katrina-Hess can provide more info. 

[SamanthaFisher]

@EveWhitelaw thank you for your question! Yes, Teams Meetings (the conferencing solution) will release before OneDrive. The Teams Meetings integration will begin rollout on August 9th, and complete within 1 week. We are still inviting customers to join the private preview if they'd like to get access to OneDrive now as well!

For the first version of the integrations, the Teams calendar will NOT sync with the Canvas calendar unfortunately. We know this is a high priority for users and it's something we plan to make available in the future.

[EveWhitelaw]

Thanks for the update @SamanthaFisher .

Can I please also ask for clarification on the OneDrive application. We noticed that the demos suggest you can create, complete and mark assignments via OneDrive.

We would not want this ability as we use Canvas and another supplier for assessment and exams and this will cause great confusion amongst staff. Is it possible to have this portion disabled/hidden, but have the ability for staff and students to upload from their professional or personal OneDrive folder into Canvas etc?

Thanks,
Eve 

[joe_fahs]

Hi @SamanthaFisher 

"For Class Teams created through the LTI, Teams Assignments and Grades should be turned off by default to avoid any confusion with Canvas Assignments. If this isn't happening in your instance, let me know and we can look into it."

In our instance of Canvas, Assignments and Grades are turned on by default in a Teams class. We followed these steps to block the apps but they still show up. 

Visit the Teams Admin Center

• Navigate to Teams apps > Permission Policies.

• Create a new policy by selecting Add or modify an existing policy.

• In the Microsoft apps section, select Block specific apps and allow all others from the dropdown menu.

• Click Add apps and search for the Assignments app. Once found, click Block. Follow the same steps for the Grades app.

[SamanthaFisher]

@EveWhitelaw Have you taken a look at this Click through demo? M365 LTI Apps and Canvas - OneDrive (octe.azurewebsites.net). It shows all of the ways OneDrive can be used within Canvas, and none of the ways involve replacing Canvas functionality. All of the placements integrate with Canvas workflows. All OneDrive files are also graded within Canvas in the Speedgrader so you will never be grading within OneDrive. The only way you can use OneDrive for Assignments is to select external tool as the submission type, in which case you can create a OneDrive template but students still submit files within Canvas and educators grade them within Canvas. That said, there are absolutely ways to disable unwanted app placements in Canvas and only use the placements you want. I will reach out to the OneDrive engineering team and learn about how this can specifically happen for OneDrive.

[SamanthaFisher]

@joe_fahs I have reached out to our Teams engineering team about this, and I will update you when I hear back! 

[SamanthaFisher]

Hi all, I just wanted to update everyone that commenting is now available on the Microsoft Partner Page: Partner Listing: Microsoft Education - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com) Previously commenting had been turned off, but it is now turned on! I would prefer that future comments and questions be posted on the partner page as it's easier for me to track. Thank you!