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How to set up Blackboard API access for the LMS app

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Robert Knight edited this page Aug 13, 2021 · 3 revisions

Must be done by Hypothesis

Create an "application" on developer.blackboard.com (once only)

This only needs to be once ever (not once per Blackboard site) and it needs to be done by Hypothesis not by the Blackboard admin. This has already been done for the Hypothesis production LMS app.

  1. Go to https://developer.blackboard.com/ and log in using the eng@list.hypothes.is account in 1Password

  2. Go to https://developer.blackboard.com/portal/applications/create and create an "application"

  3. When you click Register application and generate an API Key it will generate an Application key, Secret and Application ID for you. Save all three somewhere.

    1. The Application key is the OAuth 2.0 client ID, it needs to be used as the BLACKBOARD_CLIENT_ID envvar (see below)
    2. The Secret is the OAuth 2.0 client secret, it needs to be used as the BLACKBOARD_CLIENT_SECRET envvar (see below)
    3. The Application ID needs to be entered into each Blackboard site that wants to use our app's Blackboard API-based features (see below)

Set environment variables in Elastic Beanstalk (once only)

This only needs to be once ever (not once per Blackboard site) and it needs to be done by Hypothesis not by the Blackboard admin. This has already been done for the Hypothesis production LMS app.

Set the BLACKBOARD_API_CLIENT_ID environment variable to the Application key from developer.blackboard.com and the BLACKBOARD_API_CLIENT_SECRET envvar to the Secret from developer.blackboard.com.

Turn on the Blackboard files enabled feature flag (once per site)

This needs to be done on each individual Blackboard site that wants to use our Blackboard API-based features. It has to be done by Hypothesis. This has already been done for the application instances on our test site (https://aunltd-test.blackboard.com/).

  1. Go to https://lms.hypothes.is/admin/ and log in
  2. Go to https://lms.hypothes.is/admin/instances/
  3. Enter the customer's consumer key
  4. Check the Blackboard files enabled checkbox
  5. Click Save

Must be done by each Blackboard site's admin

Create a "REST API Integration" in the Blackboard site

This needs to be done on each individual Blackboard site that wants to use our Blackboard API-based features. It has to be done by an admin of the Blackboard site. This has already been done on our test site (https://aunltd-test.blackboard.com/).

  1. Go to the Blackboard site and log in as an administrator
  2. Go to /ultra/admin and click on REST API Integrations then Create Integration. Enter the production Hypothesis Application ID that we created on developer.blackboard.com: 36a86b89-5df8-4746-aff6-90e023e67e2a. Enter the administrator's username as the user. Click Submit.
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