The LTI Standard Integration

The LTI Standard (or, Learning Tools Interoperability®) is a standard from 1EdTech (formerally, IMS Global) that several LMSs adopted to provide interoperability. Edtech products that are LTI-compliant can work with any platform that is also LTI-compliant, as long as it's the same version of the LTI standard.

However, Microsoft Teams does not support LTI. The only way to integrate with Microsoft Teams is through the Microsoft Graph API.

API Integration for Microsoft Teams

API integration allows edtech products to directly communicate with Microsoft Teams through the proprietary Microsoft Graph API. Users can authenticate into an external product using their Microsoft credentials through an OAuth 2.0 workflow. Once the product and Microsoft authenticate the user, then the product can act on behalf of the user. This means the product can perform functions, such as

  • sending back grades to the users gradebook, or
  • creating new assignments.

This is all done while the user is on the product and not in Microsoft Teams.

How to Create a Microsoft Teams Integration?

Microsoft Teams works a bit differently than other popular LMSs. It's important to understand what these differences are and how to approach them as a developer. The 1st step to create a Microsoft Teams integration is to sign up for the Microsoft 365 Developer Program. A recent developer would gain access to a sandbox environment and the Microsoft Education Graph API. Microsoft also provides guides on getting started with several supported languages and platforms.

Read More on Microsoft Teams

Here are other articles we’ve written on Microsoft Teams to help you on your integration journey:

If you're looking for a partner who can help guide you through developing LMS integrations (like these), then let’s introduce ourselves. We’re Edlink!