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Discussion Hero Community Edition

Discussion Hero Open Source Installation

Discussion Hero is an open-source LTI application. You will have access to Discussion Hero after following this installation guide. You can download a .zip file of the Discussion Hero source code, or clone from GitHub. Links for both are below:

Download Discussion Hero

↓ Download Zip

→ View on GitHub

Requirements

  • An Amazon Web Services (AWS) instance where you are able to deploy the following: Lambda Functions, Cloudfront Distributions, S3 Buckets, Cloudformation Templates.
  • NodeJS
  • Serverless Framework
Important Note:

The Serverless Framework needs to be configured to your AWS instance by adding AWS credentials. Please see instructions here: https://www.serverless.com/framework/docs/getting-started/

Install Discussion Hero to AWS

  1. Install NodeJS
  2. Install the Serverless Framework and configure it with your AWS instance.
  3. Click HERE to download Discussion Hero.
  4. Unzip the file downloaded above, or git clone into your preferred directory.
  5. Open a terminal or console and change to the directory where the files were un-zipped/cloned.
  6. Run the following command in your terminal or console and follow the prompts to install Discussion Hero to your AWS instance. Refer to the important notes below regarding information to be input in the prompts.
    $ bash scripts/install.sh
    
  7. IMPORTANT: Wait for the install script to fully complete before closing your console. The install script will output 2 XML configuration URLS. These are the XML Config URLs you will use to install Discussion Hero to your Canvas course, account, etc. If you lose these URLs you can recover them by running npm run status in your install directory.
Important Notes:
  • Choosing an AWS Region can affect performance of your application. Follow this guide to determine which region you’d like to deploy Discussion Hero.
  • Amazon’s Key Management Service (KMS) is used to encrypt your shared secret and Canvas Developer Tokens.
  • You can use an existing KMS key if you wish, simply enter “no” at the prompt of “Do you want to generate a KMS key in your AWS instance for use in DH?”. You will then be prompted to enter the KMS key ARN you wish to use.
  • When choosing a shared secret, treat this as a very secure password. Try a long string of letters, numbers, uppercase characters, etc.

Install Discussion Hero to Canvas

Follow the instructions linked below to install Discussion Hero to Canvas. This is the standard procedure for installing an LTI tool to Canvas using a configuration URL. Use the Discussion Hero XML configuration URL. Use the shared secret that you entered into the installation script.

How do I configure an external app for a course using a URL?

Next Steps

Now that Discussion Hero has been installed in your AWS instance and configured in Canvas, Discussion Hero needs to perform a few tasks before it will be fully functional in your course. Follow instructions linked below for an overview of this process.