Forwarding Canvas Activity Logs Externally

[morgan_j]

Wondering if anyone would be willing to share how they might be forwarding Canvas activity logs to an external logging system (Splunk or syslog)?  More specifically, how you are getting analytics out externally to see student activity logs of assignment submissions, authentication, etc.  Thanks!

[ColinMurtaugh · Accepted solution]

We forward data from Canvas Live Events into Splunk using an SQS Queue and Lambda Function running in AWS. You can see a public version of the code that we use to do this here: https://github.com/Harvard-University-iCommons/canvas-live-events-splunk

This gets activity data into Splunk in near real time. 

--Colin

[reynlds]

We have a similar setup as @ColinMurtaugh , however, there are no lambdas involved. The Canvas/Caliper live events are sent directly to a Splunk heavy forwarder which hands them off to the indexer. Delay for indexing is 15 to 30 seconds, so it's nearly real-time.

[pgo586]

We have the same setup as @ColinMurtaugh (AWS SQS and Lambda, which pushes Canvas Live events from the queue onto Splunk via the Splunk API. We originally had the machinery on the Splunk side (used a Splunk connector to the AWS queue where Canvas Live Events get deposited; then decided to switch at the suggestion of Splunk, as it seemed to present more flexibility).

[morgan_j]

@ColinMurtaugh , @reynlds , @pgo586, thank you for your replies regarding my query.  Appreciate you taking the time to provide this information.  😁