Troubleshooting LTI launches

Problems that affect every LMS. For platform-specific steps, see the Brightspace, Canvas, or Moodle guide.

The tool opens a blank frame, or spins forever

Almost always the launch container. Alexandria signs users in through a secure cookie exchange, and browsers only allow that in a top-level tab. Rendered inside an iframe, third-party cookie restrictions block the sign-in and nothing visible happens.

Fix it where your LMS keeps the setting:

• Brightspace: tick Open as External Resource on the deployment
• Moodle: set Default launch container to New window
• Canvas: the placement’s display type should be new_window, which is set automatically; only check this if the placement was hand-edited

Confirming it is the iframe

Open the same link in a new browser tab directly. If it works there but not from inside the course, the launch container is the cause.

Users see “this course is not set up yet”

Working as intended. The course has not been linked to Alexandria yet.

An educator on that course needs to launch Alexandria once, which takes them to a short setup page where they link the course and choose which materials the AI may use. Students see this page until that is done.

It also appears after a course copy, because the copy has a new context ID and is therefore a new course as far as Alexandria is concerned.

Users see “your account belongs to a different institution”

Enlarge

Error LTI-10. The launch reached Alexandria; the account did not match the institution.

The launch itself worked. Alexandria could not match the person to the institution that owns the course.

An account is tied to one institution. On launch, the email address arriving from the LMS is checked against the email domains registered to your institution. The launch is refused when that address does not match any of them, or when the address already belongs to a different institution in Alexandria.

The usual causes, in the order worth checking:

1. The domain is not registered. Staff on a secondary domain (a hospital, a research institute, a faculty with its own domain) launch under an address your institution never registered. Add the domain.
2. The LMS sends a different address than expected. Some institutions send a personal or alias address rather than the institutional one. Compare the address in the error against what the LMS holds for that user.
3. The account genuinely exists elsewhere. Someone who used Alexandria at a previous institution keeps that account. It has to be moved, not duplicated.

Send us the affected address and your LMS hostname and we will confirm which of the three it is.

Launches show a “pending verification” message

Your institution is awaiting manual review. This happens when the LMS is on a vendor-shared domain, where the hostname identifies the vendor rather than your school.

We confirm within one working day. If it has been longer, email [email protected] with your LMS hostname.

Educators cannot find Alexandria in a course

Work down the chain, this is nearly always a step that looks finished but is not:

1. Is the tool enabled? Canvas developer keys are created OFF. Moodle tools can sit in a pending state.
2. Is there a deployment, and does its scope include this course? Brightspace separates registration from deployment; registering alone makes nothing available.
3. Does a link or placement exist? A deployment makes the tool available; a link is what people click.
4. Has the educator hidden it? Canvas lets educators hide items per course under Settings → Navigation.

Launches work but no course materials appear

Launching and reading course content are two different credentials.

LTI handles the launch and identity. Pulling in course materials and enrolments needs the LMS’s REST API, which is a separate credential:

• Canvas: a Developer Key of type API Key (not the LTI key)
• Moodle: a web service token, created for you by the local_alexandria plugin
• Brightspace: not required for the LTI integration; contact us if you want Valence API sync

Everyone appears as a student

The launch is not carrying an instructor role, or the institution-level role claim is absent.

Alexandria maps standard LTI 1.3 role URIs: Instructor and Administrator become Educator, Teaching Assistant and Mentor become Educator Assistant, Learner becomes Student. Where no recognised context role is present, we fall back to Student, the safe direction, since it never grants more access than intended.

If an educator is being treated as a student, check that they hold an instructor-level enrolment in the LMS course itself, not only an institution-level role.

A new deployment stopped working

It should not. Alexandria accepts new deployment IDs automatically when they come from a registration it already trusts, so adding a deployment per faculty is fine and needs no action from us.

If a new deployment genuinely fails to launch, the registration itself is likely disabled rather than the deployment.

Still stuck

Email [email protected] with:

• your LMS and its hostname
• what the user saw, and their role
• roughly when the launch happened

That is enough for us to find the launch in our logs. For urgent issues, put URGENT in the subject line.