Add an external tool to a course

The external tool activity in Totara lets you incorporate content from external LTI tool providers. LTI stands for Learning Tools Interoperability, which is a standard for developing and integrating external learning applications with a learning platform such as Totara. Using LTI, external learning applications can receive data from and send data to your Totara site. Course Creators can add an external tool directly to a course. Alternatively, a Site Administrator can add one at the system level, so that Course Creators can reuse it throughout the site, which is useful for shared applications.

Totara supports LTI 1.0, LTI 1.1, LTI 1.3, LTI 2.0 and the LTI Advantage extensions, the latter of which adds:

• Names and Role Provisioning Services: Securely sends details for course participants and groups
• Deep Linking: A better way of adding links and content from an external tool
• Assignment and Grade Services: Transmits grades and comments left by a Trainer between Totara Learn and the external tool

To add an external tool to your course page, follow these steps:

1. Click Turn editing on.
2. Select External Tool from the Add an activity / resource menu.
3. Enter the activity name, this is the name that appears on the course page for learners.
4. Customise the available settings.
5. Click Save and display (or Save and return to course).

Next steps

• Add an external tool at site level
• Manage external tools
• External tool activity settings