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Talis Aspire LTI 1.3 - Moodle Set Up Instructions

Tim Hodson
  • Updated

Overview

This article explains each step of setting up an LTI 1.3 integration with Talis Aspire Reading Lists.

You will need to create a tool deployment and placement in Moodle and then send some information to Talis for us to complete the deployment registration.

NO plugin code is required to use this integration.

You can configure tools in your staging and production moodle accounts. In both cases, Talis will link these to your live Talis Aspire Reading Lists tenancy so you can see how the LTI integration would behave with live lists.

For frequently asked questions, see this article: LTI 1.3 - Talis Aspire FAQ

Prerequisites

You will need to be a Moodle administrator who can manage external tool registrations.

You will need to be using Moodle 3.9 or above for these instructions. 

To complete this task, you will need approximately 20 minutes at most.

To test that LTI is working as expected you will need:

  • To enable cookies in your browser. The LTI specification requires a 'state cookie' to make the LTI connection. Read more about LTI Cookies.
  • To not use an incognito browser (especially if it disable cookies)
  • To already have a user account in Talis Aspire which allows you to edit reading lists, if you are testing the academic workflow

Step by step instructions

Note that some values are different depending on whether your Talis Aspire tenancy is located in the EU/APAC or Canada regions.  Check your usual tenancy URL (navigate to any list) and use the values below which have the same domain root.

  • In Moodle, go to : Dashboard >> Site administration >> Plugins >> Activity modules >> External tool >> Manage tools
  • Click ‘configure a tool manually’
    • Tool Name - A student facing name for this tool.
    • Tool Url - enter the following exactly:
      • EU/APAC - https://rl.talis.com/lti/1p3/launch
      • Canada - https://rl.ca.talis.com/lti/1p3/launch
    • Tool Description - A student facing description of this tool.
    • LTI Version - choose 1.3
    • Public key type - select 'Keyset URL' from the options
    • Public Keyset - enter the following exactly:
      • EU/APAC - https://rl.talis.com/lti/1p3/jwks
      • Canada - https://rl.ca.talis.com/lti/1p3/jwks
    • Initiate Login URL - enter the following exactly:
      • EU/APAC - https://rl.talis.com/lti/1p3/oidc_login
      • Canada - https://rl.ca.talis.com/lti/1p3/oidc_login
    • Redirection URIs - You will need to add multiple URLs. One per line.
# EU and APAC
https://rl.talis.com/lti/1p3/launch
https://rl.talis.com/lti/1p3/deep_link_request

# Canada
https://rl.ca.talis.com/lti/1p3/launch
https://rl.ca.talis.com/lti/1p3/deep_link_request
    • Custom parameters - no custom parameters are required
    • Tool Configuration usage
      • Show in activity chooser as a pre configured tool - this will be the easiest option as it will make this tool appear in the Activity Chooser when academics are building their module content.  You may wish to also customise Icons used for this tool (the options are hidden behind the 'show more' link at the bottom of the form).
    • Launch Container - choose as necessary - this governs whether the link is opened in a new window or within a moodle window with or without the side bar. Results may vary and you may need to consult your Moodle theme designer if there are any display issues with the size of the iFrame used by the inbuilt Moodle LTI. See Embed Options, below
    • Supports Deep Linking - tick this checkbox
    • Content Selection URL
      • enter the following exactly:
      • EU/APAC - https://rl.talis.com/lti/1p3/deep_link_request
      • Canada - https://rl.ca.talis.com/lti/1p3/deep_link_request
    • Services Section
      • Talis don't use any of these services
    • Privacy Section
      • Ensure roles, name and email are sent to the tool. (for earlier versions of moodle)
      • The Accept grades from the tool option is not required and can be set to Never
    • Miscellaneous
      • Talis don't need any specific settings here.
    • Click 'Save changes'.
  • You will be taken to the list of configured tools. 
  • Click on the ‘list’ icon at the top of the configuration card.
    • This will show you all the tool details which you need to give to Talis. You can use the email button to email these to yourself or someone else!
    • Raise a ticket by emailing support@talis.com and Talis will do the next part of the tool registration to link Talis Aspire Reading Lists with your Moodle instance.
      You will send the following fields.
      • Platform ID
      • Client ID
      • Deployment ID
      • Public keyset URL
      • Access token URL
      • Authentication request URL
      • Examples of Moodle Module codes and Talis Aspire Module Codes
  • Once Talis confirm that registration is complete, you will be able to test the tool by adding content to a module.

Embed Options

The Talis Aspire LTI 1.3 Tool in Moodle supports any embed options for the launch container that are provided by Moodle Itself.

In the earlier LTI 1.1 Tool there was an 'inline embed' option that was provided by an additional plugin.  The additional plugin does not support LTI 1.3 and so the inline embed option will not be available.

Talis has no plans to reproduce the inline embed option in LTI 1.3 because it was found to artificially inflate 'list view' statistics. It also required a lot of extra effort for University moodle teams to customise university themes to optimise its display.

Module Code Mapping

In the Moodle code, The Course Short Name is mapped to the LTI context.label which is what Talis Aspire will be looking for to apply a regular expression to extract the module code.  This module code will then be mapped to the Hierarchy in Talis Aspire. See our Testing LTI 1.3 Integrations article for more about module code mapping.

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