How to enable Proctored Exams in Open edX Sumac

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Hello Open edX Community,

I’m trying to enable proctored exams in Open edX Sumac and integrate with a third-party proctoring solution, but I’m running into issues with the configuration.

Problem: I cannot find Settings → Proctored Exam Settings in Studio as described in the documentation. I’ve checked all Settings options in Studio but this menu item doesn’t appear.

What I’m trying to accomplish:

  1. Enable proctored exams functionality in my Open edX Sumac installation

  2. Configure integration with a third-party proctoring provider

  3. Create proctored exams in my courses

What I’ve tried:

  • The official documentation link appears to be broken or not loading: https://docs.openedx.org/en/open-release-sumac.master/educators/how-tos/proctored_exams/enable_proctored_exams.html

  • Searched through all Studio Settings menus but cannot locate “Proctored Exam Settings”

  • Checked Course → Settings → Advanced Settings

  • I have set ‘Enable proctored exams’ nd ‘Enable timed exams’ to true

  • There is an option of Proctoring provider set as null by default. The information states to **“**Enter the proctoring provider you want to use for this course run. Choose from the following options: lti_external, null.”. However, entering ‘lti_external’ in this setting is giving a validation error.

Questions:

  1. Has the UI changed in Sumac? Is “Proctored Exam Settings” located somewhere different?

  2. Do I need to configure PROCTORING_BACKENDS in Django settings first before the Studio UI option appears?

  3. Are there any additional configuration steps or waffle flags needed to enable proctoring functionality in Sumac?

  4. How do I configure a custom/third-party proctoring backend in Sumac?

I’ve seen references to PROCTORING_BACKENDS configuration in the edx-proctoring documentation. Does this need to be configured at the platform level before Studio shows proctoring options?

Any guidance on the correct steps to enable and configure proctored exams in Sumac would be greatly appreciated!

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Hi @roop and welcome! (Roop is the nickname for my cat, Rupert :smiley: )

@kmccormick - would you be able to help here, or tag someone who might know?

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Hi @kmccormick - Any insights on how to solve the error?

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Hey @roop . Thanks for the detailed question. Looks like those docs are missing some important steps.

I will need to do some research to answer all your questions, but off of the top of my head, here is what I know you will need to do:

  1. Configure the Django setting FEATURES['ENABLE_SPECIAL_EXAMS'] = True for both LMS and CMS.
  2. Ensure that a proctoring provider, such as edx-proctoring-proctortrack, is installed, and exposes an openedx.proctoring entrypoint (example).
  3. Add the provider to the Django setting PROCTORING_BACKENDS , using the entrypoint as the key.
  4. For each proctored course, configure its proctoring settings to use that provider. I’m not sure why Proctoring Settings aren’t show up in Studio; I’m seeing the same issue on my own master dev env, so it might be a UI bug. But, I was able to get to a working proctoring settings by manually navigating to course/<course_id>/pages-and-resources/settings/proctoring/settings within the Authoring MFE. For example, https://apps.master.openedx.io/authoring/course/course-v1:OpenedX+DemoX+DemoCourse/pages-and-resources/proctoring/settings. Maybe this could be a workaround for you while we investigate.
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HI @kmccormick . Thanks for the info, that’s a helpful workaround!

I was able to confirm that the Proctoring Settings UI can be accessed directly via the path: course/<course_id>/pages-and-resources/settings/proctoring/settings.

These settings seem to correspond to what was previously configured under Settings > Advanced Settings for proctoring.

However, even with the UI, I’m still seeing the proctoring_provider field as null.

My next step is to install a proctoring provider (like edx-proctoring-proctortrack) and properly configure the PROCTORING_BACKENDS Django setting as you suggested. I’m hoping this will correctly populate the provider field.

I’ll post my results here as soon as I’ve tested it. Thanks again for your assistance!

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