Setting Up a Luminis Channel That Displays Links to Scantron Class Climate Course Evaluations: A Recipe

If you are working at a university or other institution that makes use of the Luminis portal application delivered by Sungard Higher Education and you're wanting to set up a channel that pulls in survey links from Scantron's Class Climate system for students to fill out course evaluations, this recipe is intended for you.

Requirements to use this recipe:

• Luminis IV
• Separate server that can run PHP version 5
• Scantron Class Climate v4.0 server w/ web services API

If you meet the requirements above, you can use the attached PHP script below to help with the connection between the two systems.

Steps to install/configure:

1. Log into your Class Climate server via the web GUI
2. Go to System Settings > Web Services Settings
3. Add a username and password. These credentials will be used in Step 6 below.
4. Download the class-climate.php_.txt script.
5. Change the file name to "class-climate.php"
6. Open up the file and follow the configuration instructions at the top to configure for your environment.
7. Make note of the token text string you configured in the script.
8. Figure out the md5-hashed version of the text string. If you need help figuring this out, you can use an existing service such as 7thSpace - MD5 Encoder.
9. Put the PHP script somewhere on your PHP server.
10. Make note of the URL that the script can be accessed at.
11. Log into your Luminis IV server via the web GUI
12. Go to Portal Admin > Publish a new channel > Use the following configuration (Luminis 4.2.1)
    • Channel Type: Web Proxy
    • Channel Title: Class Climate
    • Channel Name: Class Climate
    • Channel Functional Name: class-climate
    • Channel Functional Name Accessible Only: unchecked
    • Channel Description: For filling out surveys about the courses that you've participated in.
    • Channel Timeout: 5000 milliseconds
    • Channel Secure: unchecked
    • Default Cache Mode (cw_cacheDefaultMode): none
    • Default Cache Timeout (in seconds) (cw_cacheDefaultTimeout): 900
    • Cache Mode for initial request only (cw_cacheMode):
    • Cache Timeout for initial request only (cw_cacheTimeout):
    • Edit URI (cw_edit):
    • Help URI (cw_help):
    • Info URI (cw_info):
    • Pass-through Type (cw_passThrough): application
    • Default IPerson Attributes to Pass (cw_person): urn:sungardhe:dir:role,urn:mace:dir:displayName,username,urn:sungardhe:dir:loginId
    • Restrict IPerson Attributes Passing to These (cw_personAllow): urn:sungardhe:dir:role,urn:mace:dir:displayName,username,urn:sungardhe:dir:loginId
    • Application SSL (cw_ssl): XHTML.ssl
    • Info URI (cw_info): on
    • Application URI (cw_xml): [URL you figured out in step 10 above]?token=[token hash you figured out in step 8 above]
    • Application XSL (cw_xsl):
    • XSL Title (cw_xslTitle):
    • LocalConnectionContext implementation (upc_localConnContext):
    • Channel Controls: all unchecked
    • Selected Categories: [choose according to your institution]
    • Selected Groups and/or People: [choose according to your institution]

After following the steps above, your Luminis IV server should now have the Class Climate channel available. When you log in with a Luminis account that has corresponding surveys that have been created on the Class Climate system, the user should see a list of Class Climate links.
Note: If during your testing, you're having difficulties getting the survey links to appear, be sure to create the user as a participant in the course first (within the Admin GUI for Class Climate). THEN you can generate the surveys.

Update: I wanted to get permission to post the Class Climate API document here, but was sent the following message by one of their technical consultants:
"[Users] can obtain the most up to date SOAP-API document by sending a request to support@scantron.com. This is not actually supported by the support department and the customer would be required to purchase technical mentoring from the development team if they need assistance."

File: 

class-climate.php_.txt

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