[ARCHIVED] Disparity between course-level student summary data API call and actual stats?

[bmerkel]

Has anyone noticed, recently, the massive disparity between what the API call reports and just spot checking the actual course?

I spot checked several students in several courses and all of the data is off, like way off. These are past courses so there should be no floating assignments.. there aren't in the course but the report says differently. Also, assignment counts are off.. actually every count is off for both the course and individual.

[Renee_Carney]

I've not heard any reports of this.  If you see this happening again, please use the help menu on the left hand side of Canvas submit this to support.

[bmerkel · Accepted solution]

Thanks Renee, 

Actually, I just got this reply back from L2, posting it here in case anyone else has this question.. unfortunately not the response I was hoping for....

"The New Analytics tool doesn't use the API for student_summaries. We expect New Analytics to be a more accurate. The data from student_summaries counts events that shouldn't be counted anymore, and isn't counting events that should be. I've found a snippet of an explanation given from our product team. I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any other questions or concerns.

In 2019 we introduced New Analytics to replace and improve upon the course- and user-analytics offering in Canvas. We did so because we saw an opportunity to make an update to a valuable product to provide expanded and more accurate information. Since that original Analytics offering was first written, Canvas has grown and the difference between Canvas as it was and Canvas as it is now has led to disparities between what was presented in that tool and what we would expect to see.

All this to say, we know that there are discrepancies between the two. We tried very hard to understand and reconcile as many of those differences as possible, but in some cases we had to make the conscious choice to provide more accurate and relevant data."

While I am all for more accuracy and I am sure this helps out the individual course instructors, not being able to get to these results via the API either directly or through a report kills some of the automated tools and reporting that we have put in place. We need to be able to get at this information for a range of courses/students quickly, not via downloading through the browser.an 

Can this issue be reflected in the API documentation for the Analytics endpoint?