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LTI Advantage Canvas setup guide for Canvas Administrators

The Team from Poll Everywhere
  • Updated

In this article:

    Learning Tools Interoperability 1.3, or LTI Advantage, is the newest standard defined by the IMS Global Learning Consortium for communicating student data between systems. This latest standard creates a consistent, secure, and agile framework that can be used across different LMS tools. Poll Everywhere is encouraging all of our LMS integration users to update to the new LTI Advantage tools before 2021, as they provide the latest practices for protecting student data and personal identifiable information.

    In the following sections, you will find the Canvas LMS LTI 1.3 Advantage integration guide for Canvas System Administrators, version 2.0.3.

    This guide is for Canvas system administrators and describes how to integrate Poll Everywhere with a Canvas LMS system using LTI 1.3 and LTI Advantage.

    Enable permissions

    The “Developer Keys - manage" permission is necessary for the Canvas system administrator who will be performing the initial setup of Poll Everywhere on the LMS. The individual performing this setup will also need to have a role of Admin or Owner on your University’s Poll Everywhere account.

    Instructors who want to add an LTI Advantage tool to their course must have the “LTI - add / edit / delete" permission. This will be necessary for all instructors who will be using LTI Advantage tools with Poll Everywhere. They will also need an account on Poll Everywhere where this integration is configured with the role “Presenter” in order to synchronize rosters and assignments.

    Create a developer key

    There are two steps that will change depending on whether you are setting up Poll Everywhere to be available to instructors within Modules or Course Navigation. 

    Note: Some users may adjust their browser cookie settings on Firefox, Safari, and Chrome to use the Course Navigation integration.

    Note: If the institution wants to hide the Course Navigation option by default additional steps will need to be completed by the admin, and the professors when using the tool 

    Step 1: Start by logging into Canvas as the Canvas administrator. 


    Step 2: Navigate to the Admin page of Canvas, and click over to the Developer Keys section.

    Step 3: Click the button in the top right to create a new Developer Key, and select “LTI key” in the drop down to bring up the Key Settings page.

    Step 4: Open a new tab, navigate to PollEverywhere.com, and log in with an Account Owner or Admin role. 


    Step 5: Within your Poll Everywhere account, click on the gear icon in the bottom left-hand corner followed by LMS Integration. This is the page where you will manage your LTI 1.3 Platform. Select Add platform.

    Step 6: On the next page, select Canvas from the dropdown list of platform options, and Save to proceed to the Platform details page.

    Step 7: The Platform details page will provide you with the information you need to create the Developer Key setup on Canvas. Copy the information from the Poll Everywhere Platform details page into your Canvas Developer Key setup. You can use the copy link icon next to each field for easy transposing.

    Additional required fields:

    • Title - Title for the LTI Key, up to your discretion
    • Description - Description of the LTI Key, up to your discretion
    • Target Link URL - This will be the Poll Everywhere homepage: https://www.polleverywhere.com/
    • OpenID Connect Initiation URL:
      This is 1 of 2 settings that will be different depending on whether you are setting up the integration with poll everywhere to be available through Modules or the Course Navigation.
      • Module: The link can be directly copied with no changes so that it reads: `https://www.polleverywhere.com/lms/lti_advantage/launch`
      • Course Navigation: You will need to add an iframe parameter to the OpenID Initiation url. Instead of using the link directly copied from Poll Everywhere, you will need to add `?iframe=true` to the end of the URL, so that the full link reads: `https://www.polleverywhere.com/lms/lti_advantage/launch?iframe=true`

    Optional fields

    • Key Name - You may give the key a name to help you find it more easily in the future
    • Owner Email - Contact email for key creator or maintainer

    Step 8: In Canvas below where you completed the key field, click ‘LTI Advantage Services’ to expand the Developer Key permission options. Enable the following options:

      1. Can create and view assignment data in the gradebook associated with the tool.
      2. Can view assignment data in the gradebook associated with the tool.
      3. Can view submission data for assignments associated with the tool.
      4. Can create and update submission results for assignments associated with the tool.
      5. Can retrieve user data associated with the context the tool is installed in.

    Step 9: Below the LTI Advantage Services section, expand the option for ‘Additional Settings.’ Expand open this section and select ‘PUBLIC’ for the Privacy Level

    Step 10: Next, adjust the placement to match your integration type. This is 2 of 2 settings that will be different depending on whether you are setting up the integration with poll everywhere to be available through Modules or the Course Navigation.

      1. Module: remove the ‘Account Navigation’ option from the Placements filed.
      2. Course Navigation: The only placement necessary for a course level navigation launch is ʻCourse Navigation.ʼ As you type, you should see the option autocomplete

    Step 11: Save the Key Settings at the bottom of the page, and you will return to the  Developer Keys page. 

    Step 12: If you are using the Course Navigation flow and do not want the Poll Everywhere menu item to be available in all courses by default, please follow these additional steps before continuing. 

      1. Re-edit the Developer Key you just created in the previous step. 
      2. Change the Dev Key method to "Paste JSON"
      3. Next, Copy the entire text inside the JSON field and place it in a non-rich-text editor like notepad (Windows), or TextEdit (on mac, set to plain-text mode) and  edit the line containing "placement": "course_navigation", and add the following text to the end of the last entry.
          • “, "default": "disabled"
      4. Paste the changed JSON back into the Developer Key field and click save.
      5. If you encounter an error when saving, please delete the key and recreate it using the following steps:
          • On the Developer Key’s page click “+ Developer Key” and select “LTI Key”
          • Change the “Dev Key Method” to “Paste JSON”
          • Paste in your adjusted JSON from your text editor
          • Click Save and continue to the next step
      6. Lastly, you will want to make sure the URI is correct after this change.

    Step 13: Click ‘On’ underneath the State column to enable the Developer Key

    Step 14: Copy the number underneath the Details column from the Developer Key page, and save it to a convenient place. You will need this number two more times during the setup.

    Step 15: Back over on the Poll Everywhere, you will need to complete the remaining fields on the Platform edit page. Complete the fields using the following information.

    • Issuer: The issuer is the primary Canvas URL.
    • Client: The number that you copied from the Canvas Developer Key page
    • Public key endpoint: <root>/api/lti/security/jwks
    • OIDC authentication endpoint: <root>/api/lti/authorize_redirect
    • Access token endpoint: This url will be based on your issuer.
      • For a production instance: https://canvas.instructure.com/login/oauth2/token
      • For a test instance:
https://canvas.test.instructure.com/login/oauth2/token

    Note: For the fields containing a <root>, <root> will be the homepage of your Canvas instance. For example, if you access your canvas via https://polleverywhere-university.instructure.com then that is your <root>, and your Public Key endpoint would be:  https://polleverywhere-university.instructure.com/api/lti/security/jwks

    Click Save once you have completed all the fields. The set-up on Poll Everywhere is now complete.

    Adding Poll Everywhere as an App in Canvas

    Step 1: In Canvas, Go to Settings > Apps > View App Configurations to add an External App.

    Step 2: Click the ‘+ App’ button at the top right to bring up the Add App popup. Select ‘By Client ID’ in the Configuration Type dropdown, and then add your Client ID into the next field. The Client ID is the number you copied from the Details column of the Developer key.

    Step 3: You should now see a subsequent message indicating that a tool was found and needs installing. Click the Install button to continue.

    Now that the LTI 1.3 setup is complete on both the Poll Everywhere and Canvas side, it is ready to be used by your faculty. The LTI Advantage Canvas usage guide for Instructors can be found here.

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