Does Sakai Support LTI® 1.3?
The short answer
Yes. Sakai supports LTI® 1.3 and holds LTI® Advantage certification from 1EdTech Consortium, Inc., covering deep linking, grade services and roster access. It requires Sakai 19.0 or later.
Sakai's own community documentation explains what LTI is from an administrator's point of view.
Sakai was among the earliest platforms to certify, which is unsurprising — the project has been close to the standard's development since the beginning.
What is distinctive about it
It works in both directions. Sakai can act as the platform launching third-party tools, and as a tool launched from another LMS. Most platforms do only the first.
That makes Sakai genuinely useful for testing an integration, particularly if you are building the platform side and need something to launch that is not a test harness.
It is open source and self-hosted, under the Apereo Foundation. Free to run, and you can read the implementation when a behaviour is unclear — which is occasionally faster than any documentation.
LTI® 1.1 is still supported alongside 1.3, which helps institutions in transition and is not a reason to build anything new on it. See LTI® 1.3 vs LTI® 1.1.
The thing to check first
The version. Because Sakai is self-hosted, institutions upgrade on their own schedules, and an installation several major versions behind is common. Anything before 19 does not have LTI® Advantage.
When something works against one Sakai and not another, compare versions before anything else. This is the same pattern as Moodle and for the same reason.
In the administration interface, the LTI® functionality appears under External Tools, which is also what Sakai calls the older 1.1 integration — so confirm which version a given placement is using rather than assuming from the label.
Setting it up
We do not publish a Sakai-specific setup guide, because we have not integrated with it often enough to document the screens honestly. The generic LMS registration guide covers the process, and the values are the standard ones in the configuration fields article.
If you are setting LTIAAS up with Sakai and something does not match the generic steps, tell us — that is how the platform-specific guides get written.
Common questions
Does Sakai support LTI® 1.3?
Yes, from Sakai 19 onwards, and Sakai holds LTI Advantage certification covering deep linking, grade services and roster access. Older installations may not, so the version matters.
Can Sakai launch tools and be launched?
Yes, both. Sakai can act as the platform launching third-party tools and as a tool launched from another LMS, which makes it useful for testing both directions.
Does Sakai still support LTI® 1.1?
Yes, alongside 1.3. That is convenient during a transition and not a reason to build anything new on 1.1.
What version of Sakai do I need?
Version 19.0 or higher for LTI Advantage. Sakai is self-hosted, so institutions upgrade on their own schedules and you may meet installations several versions behind.
Next
- How to test an LTI® 1.3 integration — Sakai as a test platform
- Every LTI® 1.3 configuration field explained
- Generic LMS registration
