Overview
This guide walks you through connecting your district's Learning Management System (LMS), such as Canvas, to Craft. Once connected, Craft can keep your rosters, classes, and grades in sync automatically.
It also covers the questions and issues that come up most often, with clear steps you can take yourself before reaching out for help.
What This Connection Does
When you connect your LMS to Craft, the two systems can securely share information:
- Classes — your course and section structure.
- Enrollments — who is in which class.
- Grades — student grades flow through to Craft.
Instead of maintaining this information in two places, you set it up once and Craft stays current with your LMS automatically.
A note on security. Craft connects to your LMS through Edlink (ed.link/dashboard), a trusted service that specializes in secure school-data connections. During setup you'll briefly visit an Edlink screen to approve the connection. This is expected and is the same step used by many education tools. Craft never sees or stores your LMS password.
Before You Begin
Please make sure you have the following ready. Having these in place first makes setup quick and avoids the most common hold-ups.
- Administrator access in Craft for your district.
- Administrator access in your LMS (for example, a Canvas admin account).
- About 15 minutes of uninterrupted time to complete the connection in one sitting.
- Knowledge of which LMS your district uses (e.g. Canvas).
How to Connect Your LMS
The connection is a short, guided handshake between Craft and your LMS. You'll start in Craft, take a quick detour to approve the connection, and finish back in Craft.
Step 1: Start the connection in Craft
Sign in to Craft as an administrator and navigate to your Settings page. Click the Start button to the right of Start Onboarding. Craft will hand you off to a secure Edlink page to continue.
Step 2: Approve the connection
On the Edlink page, follow the prompts to approve the connection and select your LMS provider (for example, Canvas). You may be asked to sign in to your LMS as an administrator to confirm you have permission to connect it.
Step 3: Confirm and return to Craft
Once you approve, the connection completes and you're returned to Craft. In the setting’s page, click Onboarding Complete. Your district's integration status will update to show the connection is active.
Tip: Complete all three steps in one sitting. If you stop partway through, the setup link may expire and you'll simply start again from Step 1.
Understanding Your Connection Status
After setup, your integration settings show one of these states. Knowing what each means helps you tell at a glance whether anything needs your attention.
| Status | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Connecting / In progress | You've started setup but haven't finished approving on the Edlink screen. | Finish the remaining steps, or restart the connection if the link expired. |
| Connected / Active | Your LMS is connected and data is syncing. | Nothing — you're all set. |
Important: Craft will never silently disconnect your district because of a temporary problem. The only way a connection is removed is if an administrator chooses to disconnect it.
Troubleshooting Common Issues
Most issues can be resolved with a quick check. Find your situation below and try the suggested steps. If the issue continues after trying them, see Getting More Help.
"I started the connection but it never finished."
The most common cause is that the setup was left partway through and the link expired.
- Return to your integration settings in Craft and start the connection again from Step 1.
- Complete all the steps in one sitting without long pauses.
- Make sure you're signed in to your LMS as an administrator when prompted.
"A student's grades or enrollments aren't showing in Craft."
A few things can cause this, and most are quick to check.
- Confirm the student is enrolled in your LMS. Craft reflects what your LMS reports. If the enrollment isn't in the LMS, it won't appear in Craft.
- Check the student's email matches. The connection links students by their email address. If the email in Craft differs from the one in your LMS, they won't match up.
- Check whether a grade actually exists yet. If your LMS hasn't recorded a grade for that course, there's nothing for Craft to display yet.
- Allow a little time. Newly added students or grades can take a short while to appear.
"A teacher or student can't sign in to Craft through our LMS."
- Confirm the person has an active account in both your LMS and Craft.
- Confirm the email addresses match in both systems. This is what links the two accounts.
- Have them try signing in again; temporary sign-in hiccups often clear on a second attempt.
"We disconnected by mistake, or want to reconnect."
Disconnecting is always a deliberate choice an administrator makes, it won't happen on its own. To reconnect, simply follow the How to Connect Your LMS steps again.
Disconnecting Your LMS
If you ever need to remove the connection, you can do so from your integration settings in Craft by choosing to disconnect. This stops the data sync between your LMS and Craft. You can reconnect at any time by repeating the setup steps.
Getting More Help
If you've tried the steps above and the issue continues, please contact Craft Support at support@crafteducation.com. To help us resolve it quickly, include:
- Your district name.
- A description of what you were trying to do and what happened instead.
- The connection status shown in your integration settings (e.g. Connecting, Needs review).
- If it involves a specific person, their name and the email address used in both systems.
Our team can see the health of your connection on our side and will help you get it sorted.