SS&E LMS Integration: Canvas Integration Guide

Overview

Student Success & Engagement integrates with Canvas to provide updated LMS data to a student’s success team. This article provides information on the steps needed to configure Canvas to allow SS&E to connect and retrieve information using the Canvas API.

• The intent is for the Student Success Team to be able to view all important information on a student in a “one stop shop” and avoid the need to navigate between various systems.
• Automatic alerting, filtering and reporting features leverage LMS data to quickly identify students who may need additional support for their success team.
• The LMS data is matched with course section and enrollment data within SS&E so that users can view Grades, Assignments, Submissions, and last login data on the student profile.
• To verify whether or not data is syncing properly from the LMS at a high overview level, you can check the further explained, LMS Summary Report.

Setup Instructions For Canvas - SS&E Integration

In Canvas

As a Canvas Administrator, log in to your instance of Canvas and complete the following:

Create a Role for SS&E Permissions

• Click Admin in the left navigation bar
• Choose the root Canvas account
• Click Permissions in the left navigation bar
• Click the Account Roles tab. (You may also refer to the Create a new Account level role: Instructure - Sign In)

• Click the Add Role button

  

• Insert SSE_Role (formerly AvisoRole) as the role name
• Add the following permissions to the role:
  • Account-level settings - manage
  • Course Content - view
  • Courses - view list
  • Discussions - view
  • Feature Options - enable / disable
  • Grades - view all grades
  • Groups - view all student groups
  • Question banks - view and link
  • Quizzes - view submission log
  • Reports - manage
  • SIS Data - import
  • SIS Data - manage
  • SIS Data - read
  • Statistics - view
  • Users - view list

Create a User for SS&E Integration

Click Admin in the left navigation bar

• Choose the root Canvas account
• Click People in the left navigation bar
• Click +People to create a new user
• Insert "SSE_User" (formerly AvisoUser) as the Full Name
• Insert "lms@watermarkinsights.com" as email
• Click Add User to complete the process
• Assign the SSE_Role to the SSE_User

  • To assign the the SSE_Role (or AvisoRole) to the SSE_User (or AvisoUser) see the steps below:
    1. Go to Account Settings:
     Click Admin in the left sidebar, then select your account. Click Settings at the bottom of the left-hand menu.
    
    2. Open the Admins tab:
     You will land on the tab showing the current list of Account Admins (as seen in your screenshots) — with each admin's name, role (e.g., "Account Admin"), and email listed.
    
    3. Click "+ Account Admins":
     This is the blue button at the bottom of the admin list (as shown in the image below).

    

    4.  Fill out the "Add Account Admins" form (this expands, as shown in the image below):

    

    Add More dropdown — select the role you want to assign (default is Account Admin, but click the dropdown to pick a different/custom role if your account has one).
    Text box below — enter the user(s) you want to add. You can type:
    Just the email address on its own line
    Paste a list of multiple email addresses (one per line) to add several users at once. 
    
    5. Click "Continue...":
     This is the button in the bottom-right of the form (next to "Cancel"). Canvas will validate the email(s)/match them to existing users.

    6. Confirm the user match
     Canvas will show you the matched user account(s) tied to the email(s) — confirm the correct person, then finalize the addition. 

    7. To complete the "Generate Token" steps, the Admin must use the "Act as User" feature to impersonate the newly created user.

    NOTE: The snapshots attached are from our internal Canvas server. This role must be assigned to the user on the root account and not within a sub-account. Reference Link: - Instructure - Sign In

Generate Token

• Login as SSE_User (or AvisoUser) and accept terms of service

• On the left-hand navigation of Canvas, go to Account > Settings.

  

• Under the section Approved Integrations, select New Access Token. You will be presented with a window to create the token and insert a purpose for the token, such as "SS&E Integration".
  NOTE: The expiration date can be left blank. If the token expires, the data integration will no longer work and you will need to generate a new token.

In Student Success & Engagement

Note: if you are migrating from one LMS to another, do not update the LMS connection in SS&E until the Watermark team instructs you to.

Enter Connection Details

An SS&E Administrator must enter the Canvas connection details into SS&E. The Canvas Administrator and SS&E System Admin may work together on this step.

• From the SS&E Home screen, open the navigation menu "Advise" with 9 dots.
• From SS&E Administration, on the left side navigation menu, navigate to LMS Integration > LMS Integration Configuration.
• Edit the page, and edit the Integration Type to select Canvas
• In Canvas Configuration:
  • Check "enabled"
  • Fill the connection details in this section
    • host (LMS domain): Usually this looks something like "yourinstitution.instructure.com". Do not include the "https://".
    • securitytoken: This is the token created in Canvas in the previous section.
• Save the configuration

Note: It is not recommended to edit the Advanced Configurations.

Test Connection

It may take a few minutes for the integration changes to take effect.

• From the LMS Integration Configuration page, use the test connection button to confirm that the connection is configured correctly.
  • If an error message is returned, verify the configurations and permissions above are correct. Example error messages:
    • "Unable to connect. Status Code: 404 -- That page doesn't exist."
    • "Unable to connect. Status Code: 401 -- Unauthorized - invalid credentials."
  • If valid data is returned, the connection is successful and the setup is complete. An example of a successful connection looks like this.
    

Once this process is complete and the connection test is successful, please let your Project Manager and/or Technical Consultant know. Next, Watermark staff will need to build the LMS course resolver (for new implementations or LMS migrations).

Attendance Integration Limitations

Attendance Integration Limitations: Canvas Roll Call is currently being used, with attendance data integrated into SS&E. To support this, you’ll need either an automated CSV export or a direct database connection from your attendance tool.

Please note that the Canvas Roll Call Attendance Tool is incompatible with SS&E's automated attendance data requirements. Roll Call provides no API access, lacks Canvas Data 2 support, and only generates manual "canned" CSV reports via email, making automated data ingestion into SS&E impossible. Workarounds using the Canvas API, Canvas Data 2, or gradebook attendance percentage values are not viable paths for automating this data.

NOTE: Clients using Canvas Roll Call should consider an alternative attendance tool if they wish to leverage SS&E attendance features and automated alerts.