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Gmail
Most of the day a course coordinator is not in the LMS, they are in the inbox. Google gives a developer two separate ways to reach that inbox: a Workspace add-on, a card that appears when a message is opened or composed, built with Apps Script, and the Gmail API, which sends and reads mail programmatically and can watch a mailbox for a new message. A notification that a batch is ready, a follow-up that keeps its place in a thread, and a reply that reaches back into the course would need the second of those, the API, not a card in the reading pane. Nothing of either kind is built yet.
Not yet verified
- There is no Gmail connection of either kind: no Workspace add-on registered, no Gmail API OAuth client, no watch subscription.
- Nobody has decided which of the two mechanisms this would actually use, an add-on card, the API, or both for different moments, because neither is built.
- Which events are worth an email, and how much a message may say about a named student, is not designed, beyond the standing rule that the recipient would be course staff, never the student.
How it connects
Google actually offers two different things under 'Gmail integration', and they do different jobs. A Workspace add-on, the framework Google's own docs lead with, is built with Apps Script and the Card service: it shows a card when someone opens or composes a message, and can create a new draft, but it only runs while a person has that message open; it has no way to notice an email arriving on its own. Watching for a new message or a reply, and sending one with a stable subject and thread so a follow-up lands in the same conversation, is the Gmail API's job instead: a mailbox owner grants an OAuth scope, and new mail is detected through a push (watch) subscription rather than a card being opened. A notification that a batch is ready, and a reply that reaches back into the course, would be built on the API; a quick summary card inside an open message would be the add-on's job instead. Whichever piece gets built, the inbox it reaches would be a course coordinator's or a department's, never a student's. Lectora has no student-facing surface, and feedback still reaches a student only through Canvas, under the educator's own Canvas identity. Nothing of this is built yet: there is no Lectora add-on in the Google Workspace Marketplace.
Data and access
Lectora reads only what the assessment needs, and writes nothing back until an educator approves it. The Canvas access page documents the full scope, and our privacy policy, subprocessors and DPA cover the legal side.