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How do I review "External score available" for LTI activities?

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Scores that existed before the release of this feature on 4/30/2026--whether entered by a teacher or submitted by an LTI tool--continue to follow the previous score-sync behavior until a teacher manually updates the score. After a teacher makes a manual score change, Buzz begins protecting that score from automatic LTI updates.

Buzz protects scores you have already set for  LTI activities, preventing them from being overwritten by external tools unless retries are allowed. This includes scores you enter and scores automatically assigned through the Automatically assign the minimum activity score to past-due activities setting.

If retries are enabled, either manually in the Grade editor (Allow retry) or automatically using the Automatically allow retries for below-passing activities setting in Course settings > Advanced option, new scores from the LTI tool are accepted and can replace previous ones. Otherwise, additional LTI score attempts are preserved but not applied.

If the LTI tool allows students to retry the activity, scores set by the tool are still replaced by new LTI scores.

How it works

If a student visits an LTI activity after you or Buzz have entered a score for it, they see a message informing them that new scores for the activity will not be automatically applied.

If the student completes the activity, an External score available indicator appears with the score, so you know the student made a new attempt.

In the Grade editor > Score/Activity history, you can access and review the new score by clicking External scores.

  1. If you enter a new score, the External score available indicator disappears.
  2. If you Allow retry in the Grade editor, the External score available indicator disappears and scores from the LTI are allowed again.

To automatically allow students to retry LTI activities if they receive a below-passing score, enable Automatically allow retries for below-passing activities in Course settings > Advanced options.

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