IMPORTANT: If you are an organizational administrator, it is at this point that you will have to decide whether or not to install Yellowdig organization wide or course-by-course.  If you are an administrator beginning to install Yellowdig for your organization and would like more information regarding this decision, please contact support@yellowdig.com.

Steps for Integrating Yellowdig with Your LMS

1. Request your LMS Key and Secret from your institution or Yellowdig.  Depending on how your LMS is configured to run within your organization, you may have an "organizational administrator" for Yellowdig to contact for the Key and Secret.  They may also have alternate steps to tell you about compared to what follows.  If you do not have an institutional contact or you do not know the contact at your institution, you can retrieve your Key and Secret by contacting us at support@yellowdig.com.

2. Once you receive your Key and Secret, please follow the steps below as shown. The process is similar for other LTI supported LMSs and specific instructions for the most popular ones can be found here.

3. Go to "Settings" and click on the "+ App" button shown near the top-right of the Canvas window.

4.  You'll then see the following pop-up window, where you should enter the information specified below:

Enter this information in the respective fields:

Name: Yellowdig

Consumer Key: Provided by Yellowdig

Shared Secret: Provided by Yellowdig

Launch URL: https://www.yellowdig.com/lti/launch

Domain: www.yellowdig.com

Privacy: Public

*Custom Fields and Description can be left blank.

5. Click Submit and Yellowdig will be installed for your course! 

6. Decide whether you will be using the automatic grade passback to automatically grade Yellowdig participation OR just want student to have access to Yellowdig for your course without connecting to Yellowdig's point system.  If you want to connect your course to Yellowdig's point system, proceed to "Creating a Graded Assignment" immediately below.  If you just want your students to have access without connecting the point system, proceed to "Adding a Yellowdig Link to the Course Sidebar." 

Creating a Graded Assignment

1. Navigate to the Assignments page and click the +Assignment button.

2. Name the assignment. ex: "Yellowdig Discussion Assignment"

3. Set the Points. ex: 100

4. Select "External Tool" from the Submission Type drop down menu.

5. Enter https://www.yellowdig.com/lti/launch for the External Tool URL or click Find and select Yellowdig from the list of installed external tools to populate this field.

6. Though not required, because of the size of the Canvas "shell," Yellowdig is typically better experienced in its own window so we suggest that the "Load This Tool In A New Tab" option is checked (below where you enter the URL in the previous step). 

7. Click Save and Publish. 

8. Click the Assignment link that you've just created, which will launch Yellowdig and prompt you to create your board for the class.  Usually it is preferable that the lead instructor or an instructional designer be the first instructor to launch the Yellowdig link because they are made the default "board owner."  Board owners have special user permissions for managing the board.  If necessary, ownership can be easily transferred to another user later by the board owner (change board ownership in Settings -> Basics).  In the board creator you can do things like copy content from old boards or integrate users form an old board into a new one.  Or you can simply create a "fresh" board.  Learn more about the options for creating new boards from this Knowledge Base article.  You are all set! 

Adding a Yellowdig Link to the Course Sidebar

IMPORTANT: Adding a link to Yellowdig in the sidebar is not suggested for any courses where grade passback is going to be used to sync points with your gradebook.  Doing so is a common cause of confusion among students and instructors.*  

To add a link to the sidebar:

1. Head to the Navigation tab and drag the newly created Yellowdig app into the list of viewable course navigation items (seen as having been dragged from its original location, below)

2. Click the "Save" button and Yellowdig will be added to the sidebar for the course, as seen below.

3. Click on the sidebar to access Yellowdig through the Canvas LMS.  When you launch the link, you will be prompted to create a board for the class. Usually it is preferable that the lead instructor or an instructional designer be the first instructor to launch the Yellowdig link because they are made the default "board owner."  Board owners have special user permissions for managing the board.  If necessary, ownership can be easily transferred to another user later by the board owner (change board ownership in Settings -> Basics).  In the board creator you can do things like copy content from old boards or integrate users form an old board into a new one.  Or you can simply create a "fresh" board.  Learn more about the options for creating new boards from this Knowledge Base article.  You are all set! 

*Adding the sidebar link is not recommended for those using grade passback because students will have to launch Canvas from an assignment to initiate that passback.  Having a link in the sidebar results in many students reporting scoring issues because they have not clicked through the assignment.  Not putting Yellowdig in the sidebar removes this possibility.  If you still want to add Yellowdig to the sidebar, we would recommend following the steps to add Yellowdig to the sidebar only after the first week or two of the class, once you are able to verify that every student has entered Yellowdig through the assignment link and that grades are being synced between Yellowdig and the LMS.