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Set Up the Brightspace Connector

💡 Availability: The Brightspace connector is currently in limited availability. If Brightspace doesn’t appear in your connector library, contact your Airia representative to have it enabled for your tenant.

1. A one-time Domain credential setup, which tells Airia the URL of your Brightspace instance.
2. A one-time OAuth setup performed by an admin, which registers Brightspace as an OAuth connector in Airia.
3. Creating a Brightspace data source, where each user authenticates with their Brightspace account and selects the courses and modules to ingest.

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Prerequisites

• A Brightspace account with access to the org units (courses) you want to ingest.
• Your Brightspace instance URL — the base URL of your institution’s Brightspace deployment, e.g. https://brightspace.example.edu. This is stored once per tenant as a static credential (see Set Up the Brightspace Domain Credential below).
• A registered Brightspace OAuth connector in your Airia tenant (see Set Up the Brightspace OAuth Connector below). This is a one-time setup performed by an admin.

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Set Up the Brightspace Domain Credential

1. In the Airia platform, navigate to Settings → Credentials and click Add Credentials.
2. Enter a descriptive Name that will help you identify it later (e.g., Brightspace – Example University).
3. Select Brightspace as the credential type.
4. In the Domain field, enter your full Brightspace instance URL, e.g. https://brightspace.example.edu. Include the protocol (https://) and do not add a trailing slash.
5. Select the Scope the credential applies to.
6. Click Create.

💡 Multi-tenant support: Each Airia tenant has its own Brightspace Domain credential, so different tenants can point at different Brightspace instances — useful when each institution runs its own Brightspace deployment.

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Set Up the Brightspace OAuth Connector

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1. Register an OAuth 2.0 client with Brightspace

1. Ask your Brightspace administrator (or D2L support) to register an OAuth 2.0 client for Airia. You will need to provide:
   • Application name — for example, Airia Knowledge.
   • Redirect URI — your Airia OAuth callback URL: https://<your-airia-api-host>/v2/OAuth/callback. You can find this in Airia under Settings → OAuth Connectors → New → Callback URL.
   • Grant types — Authorization Code (plus Refresh Token).
   • Scopes — all six of the following:
     • organizations:organization:read
     • content:toc:read
     • content:file:read
     • content:modules:readonly
     • content:topics:readonly
     • enrollment:orgunit:read
     These are the minimum scopes the connector needs for browsing courses, ingesting files, and (optionally) enforcing enrollment-based permissions. See OAuth Scopes Reference for what each scope is used for.
2. After registration, Brightspace returns:
   • Client ID
   • Client Secret — copy and store it securely.
   • Authorization endpoint — https://auth.brightspace.com/oauth2/auth
   • Token endpoint — https://auth.brightspace.com/core/connect/token
3. Confirm with Brightspace that the token endpoint accepts Client Secret Post authentication (client credentials sent in the request body). Airia uses this method by default for Brightspace.

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2. Register Brightspace as an OAuth connector in Airia

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Option A — Airia UI

1. In the Airia platform, navigate to Settings → OAuth Connectors → New.
2. Choose the Generic OAuth provider type.
3. Enter the details you collected from Brightspace:
   • Name — a recognizable display name, e.g. Brightspace or Brightspace (Production).
   • Client ID and Client Secret — from Step 1. The secret is encrypted at rest.
   • Authorization endpoint — https://auth.brightspace.com/oauth2/auth.
   • Token endpoint — https://auth.brightspace.com/core/connect/token.
   • Scopes — all six scopes listed in Step 1.
   • Token Endpoint Auth Method — select Client Secret Post.

   💡 Important: Setting Token Endpoint Auth Method to Client Secret Post is the most common cause of setup issues if missed. Make sure it is selected.

4. Click Create. The new Brightspace connector appears under Settings → OAuth Connectors → Connected, where it can be edited or deleted later.

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Option B — Platform API

curl --request POST \
  --url https://<your-airia-api-host>/v2/OAuth/providers \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer <YOUR_TOKEN>' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
    "name": "Brightspace",
    "provider": "GenericOAuth",
    "authenticationType": "StaticUserOauth",
    "clientId": "<BRIGHTSPACE_CLIENT_ID>",
    "clientSecret": "<BRIGHTSPACE_CLIENT_SECRET>",
    "authorizationEndpoint": "https://auth.brightspace.com/oauth2/auth",
    "tokenEndpoint": "https://auth.brightspace.com/core/connect/token",
    "revokeEndpoint": "",
    "supportedScopes": [
        "organizations:organization:read",
        "content:toc:read",
        "content:file:read",
        "content:modules:readonly",
        "content:topics:readonly",
        "enrollment:orgunit:read"
    ],
    "behaviour": {
        "tokenEndpointAuthMethod": "CLIENT_SECRET_POST"
    }
}'

💡 Updating credentials later: If the Brightspace client secret rotates, an admin can update the connector (UI) or PUT /v2/OAuth/providers/{id} with the new clientSecret. Existing user credentials issued under the old secret keep working until they expire; new authentications use the updated secret.

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Create a Brightspace Data Source

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1. Add a New Brightspace Data Source

1. In your project, navigate to Data Sources and click Add data source.
2. Select Brightspace from the Communication & Collaboration category in the connector library.

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2. Authenticate with Brightspace

1. Click Authenticate with Brightspace.
2. You’ll be redirected to the Brightspace OAuth login page. Sign in with your Brightspace account.
3. After successful authentication, you return to Airia with valid credentials. The credential is saved and can be reused across other Brightspace data sources you create.

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3. Select Courses and Modules to Ingest

• Select an org unit to browse its content modules, and drill in further to browse nested sub-modules and individual files.
• You can select entire org units, specific modules, sub-modules, or individual files. The connector ingests all file-type content within the selected scope.

💡 Note: The search box filters the current level of the tree. If a course or module unexpectedly appears empty while browsing, clear any text left in the search box from a previous level.

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4. Finish Setup and Monitor Ingestion

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What Gets Ingested

• Only file-type topics are ingested. Non-file content — links, LTI activities, quizzes, and similar activity types — is skipped.
• Hidden modules are skipped entirely, including all sub-modules and files nested inside them, even if those nested items are not themselves marked hidden. Hidden topics inside visible modules are also skipped. This respects the visibility instructors set in Brightspace — to ingest hidden content, make it visible in Brightspace first.
• Broken topics are skipped automatically.
• Audio/video files hosted in Brightspace Content Service are not ingested — they are not downloadable through the standard Brightspace content API.
• Recorded video or audio added as a course topic is typically represented in Brightspace as an HTML page linking out to externally hosted media, rather than as a downloadable media file. The connector ingests that HTML page as the file — it does not follow the embedded link, so no transcript or audio/video content is retrieved for these topics.
• Nested modules (sub-modules) are fully supported — the connector traverses the entire module tree.
• The file path in Airia mirrors the Brightspace hierarchy: /{Org Unit Name}/{Module Name}/{File Name}, including any sub-module levels. If you select multiple org units, each becomes its own top-level folder.
• Each file’s last-modified date from Brightspace is preserved as the file’s last-updated timestamp in Airia.
• Image files (e.g. .jpg, .png) pass the connector’s filter but may be rejected by Airia’s downstream file-type validation if the type is not supported for indexing.

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Editing Your Folder Selection

💡 Note: If you re-authenticate with different Brightspace credentials, the folder picker will not show your previous selections, and you will need to reselect everything.

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Permissions

• When a user queries content from a Brightspace data source, Airia checks whether that user is enrolled in the org unit (course) containing the file, by matching the user’s external ID, email address, or username against the course’s enrollment list in Brightspace.
• If the user is enrolled — in any role (student, instructor, etc.) — access is granted. If not, the file is filtered from their results.
• The check happens in real time at query time and applies at the org unit level, not per file or module: a user enrolled in a course can access all ingested files from that course.
• If a student is unenrolled from a course in Brightspace, they immediately lose access to that course’s files in Airia queries — no re-ingestion required.

💡 Important: If Check File Permissions is enabled but the enrollment:orgunit:read scope is missing from the OAuth configuration, permission checks fail for all users — even enrolled ones. Ensure this scope is included when registering the OAuth connector.

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OAuth Scopes Reference

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Troubleshooting

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Next Steps