Qwickly Attendance: Cache Student Data With Qwickly

Qwickly Attendance LTI uses your Learning Management System's REST APIs to load course and user information. When configuring Attendance LTI with your Instance, Qwickly Attendance will also have been configured as a valid and trusted developer in your instance.

In a course, Qwickly Attendance LTI then uses its capacity as a trusted developer to make REST API calls on behalf of the user. With these REST API calls, Qwickly is able to load Course Information, Enrollment Information, and User information and allow the user to run the tool for Attendance purposes.

By default, Qwickly doesn't cache any user information in its servers. The tool requests all its information directly from the Learning Management System and caches the data in a session cookie. While this process works for most cases, it might cause performance issues in courses with larger enrollments as wait times for REST API responses increase.

Qwickly allows you to mitigate this by turning on the "Cache Student Data with Qwickly" settings option in your Attendance Settings. This slightly modifies the behavior of the tool in how it retrieves user data. When the tool is opened in a course after turning on these settings, Attendance LTI will still get course and enrollment information from REST APIs. However, the tool will try to get students' information from Qwickly's database, and if it doesn't find a user's information, the tool will retrieve the information using REST API and then save it with Qwickly for future use.

There are several advantages to this:

1. Efficiency: REST API requests take longer to complete than database calls do, and thus student information will be loaded quicker if Student Data Storage is turned on.
2. Reporting: Users of Attendance Pro will be able to see student data (such as names, usernames, SIS ID, etc.) in their Attendance Reports if Student Data Storage is turned on.
3. Data Export: Users running a data export from the Attendance settings screen will be able to see student data in the exported csv file.

What Qwickly Stores

Qwickly may store some or all of the following data on students:

• First Name
• Last Name
• Username
• Other Name / Display Name
  • For Blackboard, this field maps to the "Other name"/"Additional Name" field
  • For Canvas, this field maps to the "Display Name" field
  • For Desire2Learn, this field is not used
• Email
  • For Canvas, this maps to the "Login ID" field
• Company
  • For Blackboard, this maps to the "Company" field
  • For Canvas, this field is not used
  • For Desire2Learn, this field is not used
• External ID / Integration ID
  • For Blackboard, this maps to the "External ID" field
  • For Canvas, this maps to the "Integration ID" field
  • For Desire2Learn, this field is not used
• Student ID / SIS ID / OrgDefinedID
  • For Canvas, this maps to the "SIS ID" field
  • For Blackboard, this maps to the "Student ID" field
  • For Desire2Learn, this maps to the "OrgDefinedId" field

Where is the Data Stored?

Qwickly Attendance LTI is deployed on Amazon Web Services (AWS) servers and uses an AWS Aurora Instance in which to store data. We do not own any of the data centers, our AWS Aurora Instance is on various regions around the world based on client requests.  For more information, please refer to the official AWS release on their practices: https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/data-center/controls/

Will the Data get Updated?

If Qwickly doesn't find users' first names, last names, usernames, or fields which have been selected to be cached (such as SIS IDs and Emails), Qwickly will use REST APIs and attempt to retrieve any missing values. If all values exist, Qwickly updates user information every week since a user's last synced date. User Information is updated when any class that the user may be enrolled in takes Attendance.

Users Can Individually Opt-Out

Qwickly also allows users to opt out of having to store their data on an individual basis. If an institution has student data storage turned on and a student accesses their tool after their data has been saved, they will see a bar on the bottom of their page letting them know that their data is stored with Qwickly. They will be able to see what kind of data is stored, and they will have the option to opt out.

If they do opt out, this user will be marked as opted out of data storage and their information will always be retrieved via REST APIs. Their names and email would be displayed to instructors but Qwickly would not store this data in our databases. These students would also appear in Qwickly reports without their names or emails (only their unique LMS ID would be displayed).