Reduce friction from failing to resolve LTI users to VS users

[jon-betts]

See also:

• https://vitalsource.slack.com/archives/C01208U1A2F/p1657544989757309 - Discussion about this

The new automatic sign-in procedure aims to reduce user friction overall, but as a necessary result of having to convert from LTI users to Vitalsource users, we introduce a new point of failure.

In order to reduce user friction to the minimum we would like to:

• Reduce or avoid this error if possible
• Ensure our wording and presentation is clear and easy to understand for users
• Potentially provide users a way to fix this
  • e.g. with a link to login to the Vitalsource book reader?
• Potentially work with Vitalsource to fix this automatically
  • e.g. by creating logins on the fly

Implementation notes

This is mostly going to be a starting point for discussion with Vitalsource about potential fixes (if any).

Questions

• How likely is this actually to happen? Is this even worth dealing with?
• Could this be dealt with by updating the SSO or user lookup mechanism?
  • If the book reader automatically creates a login for LTI users when they login, why can't the SSO or API do the same?
• What interface would we like this to have?

Current experience

• The "VitalSource Book reader" link here is fake, but should link to the reader in the current context.
  • How would we do this?
• Users might not know who Vitalsource is

[darylhedley]

After discussion with Rob, Jon and Daryl, we've decided that this is not valid until we have some user feedback.