Two pieces of information are needed to complete the integration:

  • Consumer Key

  • Shared Secret


Please contact [email protected] to receive a key and secret for your school when you’re ready to use the integration in real classes.


For testing purposes, we also provide a demo key and secret which are as follows:


Demo Consumer Key: piazza.sandbox 

Demo Shared Secret:  test_only_secret 


Please note that the values above are for testing purposes only and have limited functionality.


Please contact us if you have any issues with the following instructions, or if you have questions about using Piazza with Moodle. 


Configure Piazza for site-wide use (Administrators) 

(Please note: This process requires administrative access within Moodle.)


Many schools choose to add Piazza as a tool at the administrative level, so that it only needs to be configured once and instructors can add Piazza in any of their classes with only a few clicks. If you have administrative privileges, you can add Piazza site-wide within Moodle. Here’s how: 


  1. Navigate to Site administration → Plugins → Activity modules → External tool → Manage Tools:

  1. Select “configure a tool manually:”


  1. Configure the tool as seen below:

    1. The Tool name is “Piazza”

    2. The Tool URL is https://piazza.com/connect

    3. LTI version: LTI 1.0/1.1

    4. The consumer key and secret are specific to your school and are provided by Piazza. Please contact [email protected] for your key and secret.

    5. Select “Show as preconfigured tool when adding an external tool” in Tool configuration usage:

    6. Privacy:

      1. A name and email are required to enroll a user in a Piazza class. Moodle should always provide this so account enrollments can be automatic. Please set these options to Always.

      2. Piazza does not currently send grade information back to Moodle, so the Accept grades from the tool setting is not needed.

Configure Piazza for your class (Instructors) 

(Please note: This process requires at least teacher-level access within Moodle.)


  1. Browse to your course within Moodle 

  2. Select “Turn editing on” on the menu on the right-hand side of your course page:

  1. On the page that follows, click “+Add an activity or resource” as seen below. 

  1. Select “External tool” on the Activities menu. 

    

  1. Under the General tab, set the Activity name to “Piazza” and then enter https://piazza.com/connect as the Tool URL. 

Then, click Show more to display a full list of options and enter your school-specific key and secret. 

  1. After entering the key and secret, click “Save and return to course.” 

  1. Once on your Moodle course homepage, you will see a Piazza module set up at the center of the page. Click the Piazza link to access your discussion board. 


  1. After clicking on the Piazza tool, you should see the “Piazza Setup” page below, where you’ll have the option to integrate with an existing Piazza forum or create a new one. After completing this step, you and your students can access the Piazza forum by clicking on the Piazza link on your course homepage.