Canvas Assignment Setup and Launch — Step 2

Once your organization is registered and activated in Canvas (Step 1), connecting individual assignments is quick: Lab.Computer integrates as a Canvas External Tool, and course or assignment details sync automatically the moment someone launches from Canvas. This guide covers configuring an assignment and shows exactly what that sync looks like on both sides, using a real test course.

Configuring the Canvas assignment

Create or edit a Canvas assignment with the following settings:

• Set Submission Type to External Tool.
• Enter the External Tool URL as https://lab.computer/lti/launch.
• Enable “Load This Tool In A New Tab” for the best student experience.
• Leave standard Canvas settings — points, deadlines, assignment policies — configured as you normally would; none of that is affected by the External Tool integration.

How synchronization works

To show this concretely: we created a course called “Intro to Python Programming” in Canvas and, inside it, an assignment called “Loops and Lists in Python” configured exactly as described above. No matching course or assignment existed on Lab.Computer yet — nothing needs to be pre-created there.

Because the tool is set to load in a new tab, opening the assignment shows a simple launch screen with a button to load it in a new window. Clicking that button is the LTI launch — Canvas hands off the course name, assignment name, and the current user's identity to Lab.Computer in that request.

On landing, Lab.Computer had already created a matching course (“Intro to Python Programming”) and assignment (“Loops and Lists in Python”) automatically — same names, pulled straight from Canvas. You don't manually recreate the course structure on the Lab.Computer side; the launch itself keeps things in sync. The assignment lands in Draft status with no notebook content yet.

Finishing the assignment after sync

The sync only creates the shell — hardware, timeout, and the notebook itself still need setting up before students can use the assignment. Click the settings icon on the assignment card to open the same three-step wizard used when creating an assignment from scratch.

Step 2 (Hardware) and Step 3 (Timeout) are unchanged from the standalone flow — pick a resource tier and disk limit, then set instructor/student idle timeouts and an optional assignment duration. Full details on the hardware tiers and timeout defaults are in Creating an Assignment.

With the wizard saved, click Start Server to open the notebook editor and build the assignment cell by cell — the same Read only / Solution / Points mechanic covered in Creating an Assignment applies here too, whether the assignment started on Lab.Computer or, as here, arrived from Canvas.

The student launch experience

Students see the same flow shown above: they access the assignment from within Canvas as usual and initiate the launch. Lab.Computer redirects them into the platform, where the synced assignment is waiting under their own account. If a student runs into activation-related issues at this stage, the fix is usually to verify tenant status with Lab.Computer support rather than troubleshooting on the Canvas side. For a full walkthrough of what that looks like — launching the assignment, working through it, and submitting — see Getting Started: Student Making a Submission.

Quick checklist before you launch to students

1. Confirm Step 1 (registration and activation) is fully complete for your organization.
2. Set the assignment's Submission Type to External Tool with the correct launch URL.
3. Enable new-tab loading for a cleaner experience.
4. Do a test launch yourself before releasing the assignment to the whole class — the resulting course and assignment records are exactly what students will see.
5. Finish configuring Hardware, Timeout, and the notebook itself before that test launch — see the section above.