Testing LTI 1.3 Integrations

Background

Your university will often want to test integrations with tool providers before going live. This article explains an approach that you can use.

Sandbox environments are not necessary

Talis Courseflow is a tenanted system and each customer will typically only have one instance of the system. Talis Courseflow does not provide sandbox environments for testing LTI integrations as we find that these are not necessary to be able to successfully test a deployment.

Multiple LTI integrations can be configured for each tenant instance. This means that staging, development and production systems can all be linked to the same Talis Courseflow system.

LTI links made in different deployments to the same tenancy are entirely separate.

Rollout plan

A suggested rollout plan looks like this:

1. Read through the documentation for setting up the LTI 1.3 tool for Talis Courseflow for your particular learning management system.
2. For your staging or development systems
   1. Complete the steps in the documentation and share the relevant information with Talis
   2. Talis will configure the LTI 1.3 tool to link to your deployment
   3. Carry out any user testing that you need to...
      1. ...verify that you know how to setup the tool and...
      2. ...understand how it will behave for your users and...
      3. whether you need to update any local documentation.
3. For your production systems
   1. Complete the steps in the documentation and share the relevant information with Talis
   2. Talis will configure the LTI 1.3 tool to link to your deployment
   3. Verify that the LTI 1.3 tool is behaving in the same way as the staging or development systems.
   4. Carry out any commissioning activities such as sharing documentation with users.

Talis Courseflow LTI Testing FAQs

1. I get an error saying I don't have permission what do I check in Talis Courseflow?
   The error message is: 

   403: Forbidden
   
   You do not have sufficient permission to manage instructor content inside Talis Courseflow

   You need to have an instructor role in the learning system.
   You need to be able to edit a list in Talis Courseflow. Speak to the library if you do not normally have cause to use Talis Courseflow.

2. There is no list found for the course in the learning system. What can I do?
   You will need to use a course which already has a list associated with it in Talis Courseflow.
   This might also mean you have to first create a course in the Talis Courseflow Hierarchy and create a list to link to the course. Your library will be able to help you set up some test data and support you.
   If the course DOES already exist in Talis Courseflow but is not found, we will need to adjust the configuration of the deployment to detect the correct course codes and map them to the Talis Courseflow hierarchy.  You can do this by sending us a list of common Course code formats as seen in your learning system. 
3. I get an error saying "UNREGISTERED_PLATFORM" what does this mean?
   This means that there is an issue with the LTI registration. Please record a HAR file while you are clicking the links that generate that error, and share it with the support team.
4. I get an error saying "Failed to fetch public key" what can I do?
   This means that as part of the LTI authorization process out LTI tool has requested a public key from your learning system, but has not been able to get a response. You will need to ensure that the public key URL for your learning system is accessible on the internet. This can happen if your learning system is in a development environment which may not normally be visible to the outside world. You will need to work with your IT team to resolve this, and they may ask for a list of IP addresses for Talis systems.