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Hello everyone, I'm wondering if there's a way to embed dynamic components in courses that adjust based on the user accessing the course. As a software company, we're keen on allowing students to launch their personalized virtual machines from within the course to access our software. While we've figured out how to create the component, we're now investigating how to retrieve the user ID using Docebo's API. Any advice on accomplishing this and where to place the component within the course structure would be much appreciated!

Hey @AFaraj, how are you trying to set this up? As an HTML training material in a course? I see you tagged widgets so maybe an iFramed widget? 

 

I would investigate whether this could be built as a Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) because it can help you solve for getting launch data from Docebo when a user opens it. If you follow the link above and scroll down to the get started page, there are public docs which can help you build using the latest LTI 1.3 standard.

 

Aside from building your app in a standards based framework, you will achieve portability because many Learning Management Systems support LTI so you would not be tied to something custom you built just for Docebo. 

 

Docebo supports LTI 1.0, 1.1, and 1.3. While there’s nothing stopping you from building 1.0 or 1.1 apps they are deprecated as of 2022 for security reasons. If you build using the 1.3 standard you’ll need to scroll down on this Docebo page for steps on ‘uploading’ it to the Central repository. I think Docebo’s handling of LTI is weak compared to something like Canvas in K-12 and higher ed where there is a specific area of the tool for account level LTI configuration whereas Docebo is sticking it in the central repo. To be fair, I think LTI is more popular in the school space where you have lots of integrations with book publishers because it makes authentication and data sharing between the LMS (tool consumer) and the vendor (tool provider) easier and more secure. 


Hey @hchewni, thanks for your helpful insights! Your suggestion of leveraging the LTI framework is something we're keen to explore for its portability and compatibility across different Learning Management Systems. We'll definitely dive into the public docs you mentioned to kickstart our LTI integration journey.

On another note, we're also grappling with the need to retrieve course-specific information, especially since we offer different virtual machines tailored to different products. It's definitely adding a layer of complexity to our integration efforts. We're wondering if this level of customization is within the realm of possibility with LTI, or if we might be pushing its capabilities too far. We'll dig deeper into the LTI documentation to see if it offers any solutions for our scenario. If you have any additional insights or recommendations on how we can tackle this challenge, we're all ears! Thanks again for your ongoing support!


Like the name of the course? LTI launches from an LMS can definitely send that kind of information over to your tool. This basic overview page covers some of the data elements that can be sent over including course name (referred to as context_title since LTIs can be launched from more places than courses).

 

I found a tool I previously used when creating a proof of concept like 6 years ago and it looks like it supports LTI 1.3. Assuming it still works the same, saLTIre can be connected to a platform like Docebo and echo all the launch parameters when you launch the tool. This way you can see exactly what Docebo is sending over. Alternatively, once you build out the authentication portion of your tool and connect it to Docebo, you could have it act as an echo server and send back the launch parameters. 


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