Tally for Canvas Administrators
A student at your school asked you to enable Tally. Here's what it is, and what enabling it involves.
What Tally is
Tally is an independent iOS app for students. It shows a student's own courses, grades, assignments, due dates and reminders, using that student's own Canvas sign-in.
- There is no Tally server. A student's Canvas information goes from your Canvas directly to their iPhone, where it's stored encrypted and replaced on every refresh. Tally never receives it, stores it, or sees it.
- There are no Tally student accounts. Tally has no account system of its own. A student signs in on your Canvas's own sign-in page, with your Canvas's own OAuth flow; Tally never sees a password.
- Access is read-only, limited to the scopes below. A student's own sign-out revokes their token immediately.
What enabling Tally involves
Enabling Tally means creating one Canvas API developer key, which takes about five minutes:
- Admin → Developer Keys → + Developer Key → API Key.
- Fill in: Key Name "Tally"; Owner Email your own contact address; Redirect URI
https://tally-app.dev/oauth/callback; Client type Public (PKCE, no client secret).⚠︎ Canvas's developer-key screen doesn't currently offer a Public client type. Ask your Canvas host (for most schools, Instructure Support) to set it before you continue, or contact us below for help.
- Enforce Scopes: ON. Select only the read-only scopes a student's own Tally needs:
| Name, personal calendar feed | url:GET|/api/v1/users/:user_id/profile |
| Courses and scores | url:GET|/api/v1/courses |
| Assignments and submissions | url:GET|/api/v1/courses/:course_id/assignment_groups |
| Grading periods | url:GET|/api/v1/courses/:course_id/grading_periods |
| To-do and due items | url:GET|/api/v1/planner/items |
| Course calendar events | url:GET|/api/v1/calendar_events |
| Announcements | url:GET|/api/v1/announcements |
| Course colours | url:GET|/api/v1/users/:id/colors |
⚠︎ These scope strings come from Instructure's own API documentation; confirm them against the scope picker in your installed Canvas version before saving.
- Save, then switch the key's state to ON.
- Send us the key's Client ID (the numeric key ID — it isn't secret) using the contact link below. We add your school to Tally's institution directory, and students there can connect from then on.
To turn Tally off for your school at any time, set the key back to OFF; every Tally token issued to your school stops working immediately.
Optional: a parent or guardian can follow a student's due dates and grades through Canvas's own observer-account and pairing-code feature, with no extra setup beyond allowing observer self-registration. Ask us if you'd like the additional scopes this needs.
Privacy
Tally's full Privacy Policy covers what a student's device requests from your Canvas and where it goes (nowhere but that student's own iPhone). It also covers the optional Canvas-calendar subscription and the signed school list Tally downloads from this domain.
Contact
Questions about any of this, or ready to send a Client ID? See our Support page.
Tally is an independent app and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Instructure, Inc. Canvas is a trademark of Instructure, Inc.