Enable Names and Role Provisioning Services in Canvas

Rana Wilds’s profile pictureUpdated 8 hours ago by Rana Wilds

Role provisioning automatically reads a user's role from Canvas and assigns a matching role in Padlet. A Teacher in Canvas becomes a Teacher in Padlet; a Student stays a Student. This happens every time a user launches Padlet from Canvas.

How it works

Two separate mechanisms are involved:

Launch token (always on) — When someone opens a padlet from inside Canvas, the launch itself tells Padlet what role that person has, and Padlet sets their Padlet role from it. This happens on every launch and there is no setting that turns it off.

Names and Role Provisioning Services (NRPS) (automatic in Canvas) — A separate service that lets Padlet ask Canvas for your full class list, so students appear in Padlet before they've ever clicked a Padlet link. It does not control login permissions or role assignment.

NRPS is enabled automatically when you set up the Padlet tool in Canvas — no extra steps are required. Just follow the setup article: Add Padlet to Canvas LMS.

Default role mappings

LMS role

Padlet role

Administrator

Admin

Faculty, Instructor, Lecturer, Manager, Staff

Teacher

Learner, Designer, Facilitator, Tutor, Online Learner

Student

Custom roles

Student

Padlet only promotes users, never demotes them: Student → Teacher → Admin. If a Student becomes a Teacher in Canvas, they'll be promoted to Teacher in Padlet. If they later become a Student again, they'll stay a Teacher in Padlet until manually changed.

If the default mappings don't fit your school, contact Padlet support with your Canvas roles and the Padlet roles you'd like them mapped to — custom mapping is set up on our side.

FAQs

If NRPS is off, will roles stop being assigned?
No. The launch token still reads roles on every launch. NRPS only affects the class list lookup.
Why is a user getting the "maximum teachers" error?
Canvas is trying to upgrade that user to a Teacher or Admin in Padlet, but your plan is already at its maximum number of teachers and admins, so the user can't access Padlet. One of these changes will fix it:

1. Use custom role mapping to map that role to Student
2. Increase your plan's teacher cap
3. Manually change their Padlet role — keeping in mind it will revert on the next launch
A user's Canvas role changed, but their Padlet role didn't. Why?
Padlet only promotes, never demotes. If they were promoted to Teacher in Padlet, they stay a Teacher unless manually changed (or promoted to Admin).

Exception: if your school uses External Rostering Services (like ClassLink or OneRoster), full roster syncing can override this safeguard and downgrade users.
What happens when a new student enrolls?
With NRPS active, they auto-appear in Padlet with the Student role (unless their Canvas role maps higher). Otherwise, they appear when they first launch Padlet.
Can I manually change a user's role?
Yes, in Manage People. But their role will revert on the next launch unless you also change their Canvas role.

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