Canvas Integration Panel

The Canvas Integration panel is where admins can control what Atomic Search indexes from Canvas and how much of your Canvas API allowance it spends doing so. It has two tabs:

Indexing preferences — what gets indexed, and how often Atomic Search looks for changes.
Canvas API usage — how many Canvas API calls you've used today and this year, and the options available for reducing that number.

Who can open the panel

The Canvas Integration menu item only appears when all three of the following are true:

Your LMS is Canvas. The panel is Canvas-specific and does not appear on other LMSs.
You are a customer admin in Atomic Search. Instructors and non-admin users never see it.
You launched Atomic Search from a Canvas account — the root account or a subaccount. It does not appear on a launch from inside a course.

What these settings affect

Every setting on the Indexing preferences tab is account-wide (domain-level). Changes apply to your whole Atomic Search instance, not just the account you happened to launch from, and they affect what every user at your institution can find in search results.

Opening the Canvas Integration panel

Launch Atomic Search from your Canvas root account or a subaccount.
Select the three-dot menu in the top-right corner.
Choose Canvas Integration.

The panel opens on the Indexing preferences tab. Use the back arrow next to the "Canvas Integration" heading to return to search.

Indexing preferences

How saving works

Nothing on this tab takes effect until you save it.

The bar at the top of the tab shows the current state: All changes saved, Unsaved changes, Saving…, or Preferences saved.
Save changes commits your edits. The confirmation message clears itself after a few seconds, and immediately if you make another change.
Cancel discards every unsaved edit on the tab and restores the last saved values.
Both buttons stay greyed out until you actually change something.

Leaving the tab, or closing Atomic Search, with "Unsaved changes" showing discards those edits.

Indexing mode

Controls how much Atomic Search checks for on its scheduled call to the Canvas REST API. Each step up finds changes sooner and spends more of your daily call budget.

Option	What it does	When to use it
Disabled	Atomic Search doesn't call the Canvas API on a schedule. Only manual indexing requests run.	You want zero scheduled API spend, and you're content to index on demand.
New courses and course status changes	Checks for courses that match your course types, plus publish and conclude changes.	The usual choice. New courses appear in search without anyone requesting them.
New courses plus content updates	Also rechecks known courses for edited pages, files, assignments, and other item types.	Only when Canvas live events are not enabled and you need edits picked up automatically.

Two things to know:

A brand-new installation may be set to Disabled, and nothing will index until you change it. If a fresh install of Atomic Search is finding nothing at all, check this setting first.
If Canvas live events are turned on, "New courses plus content updates" is greyed out. That is expected. Live events already report content edits as they happen, so the expensive polling option would only duplicate the indexing work. The option becomes selectable again if live events are turned off.

Sub-accounts

By default, every sub-account is indexed. Sub-accounts nest, so turning one off skips every account beneath it.

To index only part of your Canvas hierarchy:

Turn on Limit indexing to specific sub-accounts.
Pick the accounts you want from the account tree that appears. The panel shows a running count of how many accounts are selected.
If your hierarchy is large, use Load more to bring in additional accounts.
Select Save changes.

Notes:

Selecting an account also includes everything beneath it. You don't need to tick each child account individually.
Leaving the toggle off means no filter at all — every sub-account is indexed. It does not quietly default to the account you launched from.
Turning the toggle off again clears your selection. Turning it back on restores the last set of accounts you picked, as long as you haven't saved in between.
If Atomic Search can't display your account hierarchy, it falls back to a Sub-account ids text box where you enter numeric Canvas account IDs separated by commas (for example 1, 2, 3). Non-numeric entries are ignored and the field tells you which ones it skipped. This fallback usually appears because your Canvas admin permissions don't overlap the accounts Atomic Search indexes, or because the account is too newly added to have been resolved yet.
Because this setting is account-wide, sub-accounts selected from a different launch are preserved when you save — you won't wipe out another administrator's selection by saving from your own corner of the hierarchy.

Item types

Choose which Canvas content Atomic Search indexes. Turning a type off stops Atomic Search spending Canvas API calls on it — and removes that content from search results. The heading shows a running count, such as 9 of 9 on.

Available types: Pages, Syllabi, Assignments, Quizzes, New Quizzes, Discussions, Announcements, Files, URLs.

Discussion replies is a separate toggle nested under Discussions. Replies are fetched with a Canvas API call of their own, so turning them off saves those calls while still indexing the discussion topics themselves. With Discussions off, the replies toggle is greyed out and reads as off — there's nothing to fetch replies from.
Quiz questions are not gated separately. They are indexed with their quiz.

Turning a type off does not delete what's already indexed on its own schedule — it stops further indexing of that type. If you need existing content removed from results promptly, contact Atomic Jolt support.

Course discovery

Controls which courses Atomic Search picks up, and how often it looks for new ones.

Setting	Default shown	What it does
Only index published courses	Off	Unpublished courses are skipped until they go live.
Only index courses with enrollments	Off	Empty shells and templates are skipped.
Courses that started within the last	48 months	Anything that started earlier is left out of discovery. Maximum 48 months (4 years).
Courses starting within the next	1 month	Upcoming courses are indexed ahead of their start date. Maximum 6 months.
Rediscovery interval	24 hours	How often Atomic Search looks for new courses. Shorter intervals surface new courses faster but spend more of your API budget.

The two toggles are both off by default, which means unpublished courses and courses without enrollments are indexed. Turning them on is one of the quickest ways to cut indexing volume at a large institution.

The three numeric fields require a value of at least 1 and won't accept a figure above their maximum. The month limits are capped in the product; a larger number is not honored.

A course older than your window can still be indexed on request from within the course itself. "My course from five years ago isn't searchable" is usually this setting, not a fault.

Find & Replace settings

Find & Replace has its own controls. A note at the bottom of the tab links to the Admin settings page, where you can configure those.

Canvas API usage

As of August 1, 2026, Instructure charges vendors per Canvas API call, so Atomic Search caps the calls it makes on your behalf. This tab shows where you stand.

The usage meter

Canvas API calls used today — calls used against today's ceiling, with a percentage bar.
This year — calls used against your annual allowance.
Daily limit resets — how long until today's count resets, counted down live.
How limits are calculated opens the full explanation on the Atomic Jolt support site.

Your daily limit is not a fixed number. It's recalculated each day from your remaining annual allowance and the days left in your contract year, which is why the ceiling shown here moves. Read it off this screen rather than writing it down.

The meter changes color as you approach the ceiling, and you'll see warnings elsewhere in Atomic Search too:

Approaching the limit — a warning banner appears with a link back to this tab.
At the limit — an alert on this tab reads "You've hit today's Canvas API limit." Atomic Search pauses indexing until the limit resets. Searches keep working against everything already indexed; only new indexing is affected.
Find & Replace at the limit — a running job pauses and resumes the next day. The banner links here for admins, and to the public documentation for instructors.

Nothing is lost when you hit the limit. Indexing resumes when the daily count resets, though your index may be out of date until it catches up.

Recommended for you — connect Canvas Data 2

Canvas Data 2 (CD2) delivers your institution's content to Atomic Search in bulk. With CD2 connected, indexing and Find & Replace both run against that data instead of the API, which removes nearly all of your usage without turning anything off. Learn how opens the setup instructions.

This is the single most effective change available to most institutions. Every other option on this tab reduces usage by indexing less; CD2 reduces usage while indexing the same content.

More ways to address Canvas API limits

Option	What it does
Turn on Canvas live events	Re-index only what changes instead of repolling the API. Removes a large share of your daily calls. Set up live events opens the instructions. Once live events are active, this row changes to confirm they're on.
Limit Find & Replace	Turn Find & Replace off, or hold it to course level, so runs stop making account-wide API calls. Admin settings takes you there.
Tune your indexing preferences	Narrow which sub-accounts, courses, and item types get indexed, and how often Atomic Search looks for changes. Open preferences returns you to the first tab.
Upgrade your subscription	If your institution consistently hits its cap, a higher tier raises your yearly allowances. Contact sales to discuss it.

Reducing your Canvas API usage

In order of impact:

Connect Canvas Data 2. Removes nearly all usage without reducing what's searchable.
Turn on Canvas live events. Removes the need for scheduled content polling.
Step the indexing mode down, from "New courses plus content updates" to "New courses and course status changes," or to "Disabled" if you're content to index on demand.
Turn on the Course discovery filters — skip unpublished courses and courses without enrollments.
Shorten the course discovery window from 48 months to the number of years you actually need searchable.
Lengthen the rediscovery interval beyond 24 hours.
Turn off item types you don't search — Discussion replies and Files are usually the largest.
Limit indexing to specific subaccounts, if whole branches of your hierarchy don't need search.
Limit Find & Replace to course level on the Admin settings page.

Restricting search to part of your Canvas hierarchy

Indexing preferences → Subaccounts.
Turn on Limit indexing to specific subaccounts.
Select the top account of each branch you want indexed — children are included automatically.
Save changes.

Content in the accounts you removed stops being indexed going forward. Contact support if you need already-indexed content from those accounts removed from results.

Making older courses searchable

Indexing preferences → Course discovery.
Raise Courses that started within the last, up to the 48-month maximum.
Save changes.

If you need content older than four years, index those courses individually from within the course, or contact Atomic Jolt support.

Responding to a hit daily limit

Open Canvas Integration → Canvas API usage and confirm the limit is the cause.
Note the reset time. Indexing resumes on its own; no action is required to restart it.
If you're hitting the limit regularly, work down the reduction list above, starting with CD2.
If usage stays at the cap after those changes, use Contact sales to discuss your tier.

Troubleshooting

I don't see Canvas Integration in the menu. You need to be a customer admin, on Canvas, launching from a Canvas account rather than a course. Relaunch Atomic Search from your root account.

Nothing is being indexed at all. Check Indexing mode first. If it's Disabled, only manual requests run.

"New courses plus content updates" is greyed out. Canvas live events are enabled, which makes that option unnecessary — live events already report content edits as they happen.

A recently created course isn't in search results. Atomic Search looks for new courses on the Rediscovery interval, 24 hours by default. Check the Course discovery filters too: if Only index published courses is on, an unpublished course is skipped until it goes live.

An old course isn't searchable. It probably falls outside Courses that started within the last. You can raise that up to 48 months, or index the course on demand from within the course.

Some sub-accounts aren't indexed and I didn't limit anything. Check whether Limit indexing to specific subaccounts is on. Because the setting is account-wide, another administrator may have set it.

I see a text box for sub-account IDs instead of the account tree. Atomic Search couldn't resolve your account hierarchy — usually because your Canvas admin permissions don't overlap the indexed accounts, or the account is very newly added. Enter numeric Canvas account IDs separated by commas, or contact support.

My Find & Replace job stopped partway through. If the banner mentions the daily Canvas API call limit, the job is paused and resumes tomorrow. Nothing already replaced is rolled back.

My changes didn't take effect. Check the bar at the top of the Indexing preferences tab. If it reads Unsaved changes, select Save changes.