Testing LTI 1.3 Integrations

Background

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

Important: If you already have LTI 1.1 integrations configured, these do not need to be deleted or altered in any way. Removing LTI 1.1 configurations will permanently remove LTI 1.1 links from courses in your learning system. It is unlikely that your learning system has a recovery mechanism if you do this accidentally.

Sandbox environments are not necessary

Talis Aspire and Talis Elevate are tenanted systems and each customer will typically only have one instance of the system.  Talis Aspire and Talis Elevate do 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 Aspire or Talis Elevate 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 Aspire or Talis Elevate 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.
4. Once you are happy that users have created LTI 1.3 links to replace their LTI 1.1 links, you can safely remove the LTI 1.1 configurations.
   Important: removing LTI 1.1 configurations will permanently remove LTI 1.1 links from courses in your learning system. it is unlikely that your learning system has a recovery mechanism if you do this accidentally.