How it works · Connect Canvas
One token, one time. Read-only, encrypted.
Pearsight talks to Canvas the same way the Canvas mobile app does — via an access token you generate inside Canvas and paste into Pearsight once. Here’s the whole flow, end to end.
Generate the token
From Canvas settings, in about a minute.
In Canvas, open Account → Settings → Approved Integrations → + New Access Token. Name it “Pearsight,” leave the expiration blank for the longest-lived token, and copy what Canvas shows you.
The token only appears once — that’s a Canvas rule, not ours. Paste it into Pearsight immediately. If you lose it, regenerate; no harm done.
What the token can do
Read your kid’s assignments. That’s it.
The access token Canvas issues inherits your account’s permissions — but Pearsight only uses the read-only ones. We can’t submit assignments, message teachers, change grades, or join classes on your behalf. Canvas would refuse the request if we tried.
The token is encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM. It never appears in logs. The plain value lives in server memory only long enough to issue a single Canvas read.
The 120-day refresh
Canvas tokens age. Pearsight handles it.
Canvas tokens have a built-in 120-day idle expiration. About a week before yours expires, Pearsight emails you to regenerate — the same one-token, one-time paste as the first setup.
If a token expires unexpectedly, the dashboard still works on the data already in Pearsight — assignments stop refreshing until you reconnect, but nothing disappears.