An extension to standard LTI, external tools can be configured to appear when a student is submitting content for an assignment. When a tool is configured, users will see an additional tab during assignment submission for assignments that accept online submissions. If a user selects a homework submission tool, a popup will appear where the external tool will be loaded. The tool should direct users to select or build some piece of content, then submit that content to the tool. The tool will then redirect the user to the LTI success URL with some additional parameters. Canvas will take this information and submit it for the current user as their submission to this assignment.

An LTI app that wraps annotation around Canvas files

An external tool can ask for an xAPI callback URL, and then POST back an interaction activity to Canvas. This will update the activity time for the user in Canvas, and add a page view for that tool. Page views will show up in the course analytics section as activity.