Using LTI to onboard users

If you've purchased a School license, you can connect ThingLink to your LMS using an LTI integration. This will allow your teachers and students to login into ThingLink or create an account by clicking on the ThingLink app button in your LMS.

• Connecting ThingLink to your LMS
• Setting up the LTI app in Canvas
• Setting up the LTI app in Moodle
• How it works
• Troubleshooting

Note that you do not need the LTI integration to embed ThingLink content.

Connecting ThingLink to your LMS

As the admin of your School account, you can find consumer key, shared secret and other information needed to enable the integration by going to 'My School' and navigating to the LTI tab:

Next, you'll need to add the app to your LMS. See the step-by-step instructions for Canvas and Moodle below or find the LTI guides for other systems here:

• Blackboard
• Schoology

Setting up the LTI app in Canvas

1. Log into Canvas with an admin account. Go to 'Admin' - 'Settings' - 'Apps' and use the '+App' button to enable ThingLink for all courses:

2. Once you've added the app, it will appear in all courses in the course navigation menu on the left.

Alternatively, you can add the app to select courses via the course settings. Use the same configuration type, consumer key and shared secret.

Setting up the LTI app in Moodle

Note that you must be an admin in order to add the app for the first time.

1. Go to Site Administration, select the 'Plugins' tab and select 'Manage tools' under 'External tools'.
2. Click 'Configure a tool manually':
   
   
   Fill out the form using instructions above, then expand the 'Privacy' section and select the following options:
   
   ThingLink needs launcher's name and email address to set up the accounts. 
3. Click 'Save changes' and the app should appear in your external tools list.

Once the app has been added, teachers will be able to add it to their courses as an external tool.

How it works

When a user clicks on the Thinglink App in the LMS, a new browser tab will open and the student or teacher will be automatically logged in. If there is no existing ThingLink account for that individual, a new user will automatically be created and added to the organization. 

Teacher and student accounts are defined automatically. The following LTI roles automatically create a Thinglink Teacher account:

"Administrator", "urn:lti:sysrole:ims/lis/Administrator",
"Instructor", "urn:lti:instrole:ims/lis/Instructor",
"Staff", "rn:lti:instrole:ims/lis/Staff",
"Mentor", "urn:lti:instrole:ims/lis/Mentor",
"TeachingAssistant", "urn:lti:role:ims/lis/TeachingAssistant

If the user does not have one of these roles, they get a student account.

We'll also use their username and profile picture for their ThingLink profile.

Troubleshooting

The integration will return an error message if a user already has an account that does not belong to your school. if you encounter this issue, either ask the user to sign into their account from the ThingLink login page and join your school or contact our tech support.