Publish and Unpublish Announcements

on Apr 9, 2015

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I love that Canvas can bring over announcements when I copy content from another Canvas course. This keeps me from copying and pasting announcements I make every semester. To further develop this feature, it would be nice if Announcements were unpublished on import, meaning the instructor can see them but the students can't. With a "publish button on every announcement, instructors could release announcements quickly when they are needed without the tedious setting of a date and time on each announcement.

This feature would also bring announcements in line with other tools in Canvas that use publish and unpublish functionality and would help instructors who might unintentionally be releasing announcements to students from a past semester.

62 Comments

jthoms@stanford.edu Apr 15, 2015 5:12 PM
This is an excellent suggestion! I'd add that the current "Save" button causes confusion. Except when the announcement is delayed, this action is really more of a "Send" in instructor's minds.
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- Rob Ditto @ jthoms@stanford.edu on May 5, 2015 12:11 PM
  Voted! Regarding John Thomson's comment:
  
  With Save & Publish now in the Canvas Beta Release Notes (2015-05-04) for the current set of Draft State-capable features, which option seems better to everyone if Announcements becomes capable of Draft State?
  A Send button automatically Publishes the announcement.
  Or, the immediate-send button is labeled Save & Publish for consistency with other Canvas features.
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  - dhulsey@nmjc.edu @ Rob Ditto on May 5, 2015 12:29 PM
    I think consistent nomenclature and behavior is the best way to go.
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  - Deborah Barr @ Rob Ditto on Jun 24, 2015 10:23 AM
    I think the easiest way to solve the problem is to add an end date box. If you add that it will end and then not be visible to current students or those that come in the new semester until someone changes the date. Just a suggestion.
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ghumisto Apr 23, 2015 11:46 AM
Control over the Announcements is a MUST! When a previous course is imported, the Announcements are sent out even if the course is Unpublished. This is a flaw in the Canvas design. Again, this is a design flaw which must be corrected, rather than a tweak or preference. Instructors should have complete control over the Announcement feature.
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Susan Nugent Apr 23, 2015 1:10 PM
I agree with Dallas E Hulsey. We have several instructors who are not aware that when they copy a course all the announcements from previous semester are visible to students. It would be nice if they came over unpublished and then the instructor can reuse and publish the announcements as needed.
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- Brantlee Richter @ Susan Nugent on Jan 3, 2016 1:07 PM
  Case in point: I just learned about this quirk from reading this thread ... after importing a whole course. I came to the boards trying to figure out how to hide or unpublish the announcements, so that I can edit and release them as we go. I'm pretty bummed to think that the announcements from last year have already been sent out. I would never have guessed that would happen!
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  - Brenda Adrian @ Brantlee Richter on Jan 4, 2016 3:14 PM
    We just discovered this (starting our 2nd semester of using Canvas). Faculty did not realize their copied announcements would automatically go out in the new class. This really needs to be fixed so that faculty can copy the content but make the announcements unpublished in the new course. I agree that consistent use of Save and Publish would be the way to go for these. I'll be updating our start of the semester checklist to add a warning to copy only specific content and not Announcements.
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Stefanie Sanders May 5, 2015 7:18 AM
Dallas, this would make preparing a course at the beginning of every semester so much easier. My current workaround is to import everything except announcements into my new course shell, then importing the announcements separately into a sandbox, and then copying, pasting, and editing every announcement as necessary in order to re-post it in the new course--and of course, I have to remember to do that on a regular basis. Even typing the workaround takes more time than a simple publish/unpublish feature.
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- dhulsey@nmjc.edu @ Stefanie Sanders on May 5, 2015 8:04 AM
  Yup! I do pretty much the same thing, Stefanie. Juggling announcements is a pain right now for sure, but I have faith that the folks at Instructure and our fellow Canvas users will see the convenience of publishing and unpublishing announcements.
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Zach Welhouse May 5, 2015 11:41 AM
It would make curating classes easier.
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mwinton May 7, 2015 9:29 AM
This would be very helpful and avoid student confusion at the beginning of the semester.
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cms_hickss Jun 3, 2015 8:37 AM
I would also like to see statuses or categories on the Announcement Pages. For example:
- Published / Live /Visible
- Delayed (for those announcements that have a delayed posting date sent)
- Unpublished
- Archived (for announcements copied over that you do not need but do not want to delete)
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- Deborah Barr @ cms_hickss on Jun 24, 2015 10:21 AM
  All of these ideas would be great, but from a programming perspective I am wondering if adding a "end date" box might be easier. If it has "ended" then maybe it would gray out which would indicate it is no longer visible. Not sure.
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  - cms_hickss @ Deborah Barr on Jun 25, 2015 10:13 AM
    If have end dates on our Campus-wide announcements, but from the Admin interface it doesn't matter. All the announcements show all the time. There is no collapsing them, no way to mark them as posted or pending release. Right now it is one very long, scrolling page (and that's just after two years).
    
    I'm hoping that if they can cleanup the "course" announcement area that some of those changes will also make it up to "Global Announcement" area.
    
    That said, I would love to see Course Announcements have both start and stop date and time (instead of just the delayed posting date and time).
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Pollie McCloskey Jun 21, 2015 12:08 PM
Absolutely need this functionality in announcements. And I agree- I wish that when I look at the list of all my announcements I could easily tell a) if it has been published/sent yet or not b)what date it was sent and c) what date it is scheduled to send.

I use announcements as an integral part of my teaching and right now using it is tedious when I import, but also daunting to start from scratch each quarter.
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Kira Wennstrom Jun 22, 2015 12:13 PM
Wow, I'd vote for this ten times if I could . It would be sooo helpful.
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dl-smalott@shoreline.edu Jun 22, 2015 1:22 PM
I wish that when I look at the list of all my announcements at a glance I could easily tell a) if it has been published/sent yet or not b)what date it was sent and c) what date it is scheduled to send.
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Deborah Barr Jun 24, 2015 10:16 AM
I think this is an excellenta suggestion but what might be even easier to do is to just allow the opportunity to have a "turn off" date when you set up a delay posting date. This way when you transfer the course it would already be turned off and faculty can just change the dates when they are ready for it.
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Peyton Craighill Jul 17, 2015 2:41 PM
Thanks for the feedback, everybody!

We'll likely cover this request in workshop next week, and I'll report back afterwards.
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- Charles Woolum Jr @ Peyton Craighill on Jul 23, 2015 5:59 AM
  My apologies if this has already been asked, but has there been any discussion or thought into adding duration lengths to Announcements? By this I mean, I know we can already delay announcements from being published until a certain date, but it would be beneficial to have an option to set a date for an announcement to un-publish automatically as well. I have found that instructors in some instances don't like the idea of having to go in and manually 'hide' an announcement.
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  - Peyton Craighill @ Charles Woolum Jr on Sep 2, 2015 3:39 PM
    I view this as similar in function to Discussions, which is kind of how we're thinking of implementing it. (In other words, publish/unpublish states with available from/until dates, as well.)
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    - dhulsey@nmjc.edu @ Peyton Craighill on Sep 2, 2015 5:39 PM
      Yes, that will work quite well for my needs and was my intention in the original request. Thanks, Peyton!
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Peyton Craighill Sep 2, 2015 3:34 PM
Hope everybody's fall start is going well!

Quick update: This idea has been added to part of a larger Announcements enhancements effort, which is second in communications priority to Conversations (i.e., Inbox) enhancements. We are in the process of capacity planning for 2016, so stay tuned for additional updates.
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- Sandra Nagel @ Peyton Craighill on Jul 15, 2016 10:15 AM
  Apparently, one year later, these necessary functions are still NOT available. This would be an easy change to make. Can you update us on any progress made?! Thank you.
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- dhulsey@nmjc.edu @ Peyton Craighill on Aug 19, 2016 12:22 PM
  Hey, Peyton! We have passed early 2016. Is the larger project for announcement enhancements still on the radar?
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fernerj@erau.edu Nov 10, 2015 5:06 AM
I set up release dates on announcements prior to the course being published. But I can see where someone might be delayed and need to import after the course is published. I can only imagine doing so and the system sending students a blast of some 20+ announcements... ;o)
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- Brooke Quinlan @ fernerj@erau.edu on Feb 15, 2017 9:44 AM
  I do what Jeff does. It takes hours because I have over 50 announcements in each of my distance learning courses. But until they fix this issue, it is the only way to avoid students getting the blast of announcements all at once. I can no believe they haven't fixed this yet.
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Marcia Woodard Dec 30, 2015 2:21 PM
I agree with Dallas Hulsey. Every quarter when I set up my classes, I curse when I remember that I have to go into every announcement and change the publish date if I don't want students to see it at the beginning of the quarter. We need a "one-click" method to unpublish announcements.
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Ann Schlosser Jun 3, 2016 12:38 PM
A single page with ALL announcements (e.g. by title) and an edit/delay posting date would be great. Please consider opening this suggestion back up again.
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- Stefanie Sanders @ Ann Schlosser on Jun 3, 2016 12:46 PM
  Ann, it's not necessary to reopen this feature idea for voting. The feature has already received more than enough votes to land on the radar of the product team, and, as Peyton's comment indicates, it is now part of a larger Announcements project. You can follow this idea to monitor its progress.
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Thea Alvarado Jun 9, 2016 6:00 PM
I'm sad to see that it's June 2016, and this still isn't an option. I hate combing through all the Announcements to delay their posting until I can figure out if I will use them during the semester, and when. Please make this an option!
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Kenny Hirschmann Sep 6, 2016 3:04 PM
It is now one year after you stated that there would be a revamp of Announcements announced. Have you announced that? Any updates in regard to this?
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Laura Burns Sep 7, 2016 10:44 AM
I'm adding my voice to the requests to fix the Announcements. The "publish/unpublish" idea seems like the best one. I'm very disappointed that so many instructors put this as a priority, and still nothing has been done.

Laura
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David Dillard Sep 7, 2016 2:41 PM
I agree with this suggestion. Prior LMS system left announcements and assignments unpublished (not released), and clearly distinguished which were available. Just spend a long session in Chat with Canvas, and all they could say is go to the Student View to see what is visible to students. This is a real disappointment.

I would also like to see assignments brought over with the suggested date (updated for new semester as Canvas nicely does) but without releasing them automatically. I typically tweak announcements and assignments each semester, yet appreciate having drafts from prior semester.
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Chris White Sep 12, 2016 8:07 AM
I would like to echo several of the previous posts. I just became aware that announcements were set to automatically go out to students, and I would have loved to give my faculty a heads up about this. At this moment, the only workaround I can think of is to keep a copy of the announcement text in an unpublished page and not import the announcements themselves from semester to semester. It sure would be nice if we could publish/unpublish.
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Christopher Ostwinkle Sep 18, 2016 10:05 PM
Adding on as a requester for this feature as well. I would love to have an end date option for each course announcement. I want to save them all so that I can import them from semester-to-semester but I don't want students to see all of them (the list grows as the term progresses). Adding an end date like is in place with system announcements would be beneficial.
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- fernerj@erau.edu @ Christopher Ostwinkle on Sep 19, 2016 4:42 AM
  If an end date were available I probably wouldn't use it for most announcements as I prefer students have access to all my words of wisdom for reference.
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  - Christopher Ostwinkle @ fernerj@erau.edu on Sep 19, 2016 12:30 PM
    And that's the beauty of having the option. One leaves the date off/blank and students see them all. Others place a date in the end date box and they are not visible after the date. Everyone wins
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Brandon Davies Oct 14, 2016 1:25 PM
What is the point of voting for ideas if they never get implemented? It seems like this would be a simple idea to implement, given that you can publish and unpublish just about everything else, but here it is more than a year after this idea was "accepted" and I this incredibly basic functionality is still missing. My institution just moved to canvas this semester and frankly it has been a frustrating disappointment.
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- fernerj@erau.edu @ Brandon Davies on Oct 14, 2016 6:32 PM
  Hi Brandon Davies ! I used my prior LMS for over a decade so change was initially challenging for me. Once I began adjusting my process to fit how Canvas functions I found new joy in the simplicity. As related to announcements, I needed to plan ahead and thus copy in my announcements ahead of term start.
  
  As for your comment about the voting and such let me say I understand your point. There are many pages of ideas (currently 26) with 20 ideas per page. And these cycle through and are updated every few months. While I get the point that gathering the voice of the customer is important, and I appreciate the notion of democratizing the identification via popular vote, I am thinking that keeping track of, developing or setting aside nearly 500 ideas every quarter or thereabouts is a daunting task. The folks in the community, the staff, volunteers, and our peers certainly do a fine job of sorting the wheat from the chaff and I thank them for their effort. Perhaps the forum is a victim of its own success in that everyone with an idea can post it. Even a guy named Jeff.
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  - Brandon Davies @ fernerj@erau.edu on Oct 17, 2016 2:54 PM
    Having unpublished drafts of announcements goes beyond just importing last years announcements (though that is an important consideration). As is, if I'm writing an announcements and get interrupted (occurs all too often), it would be nice just to save what I have done and not have to worry about it. As is, if I hit "save" it would send a half written announcement to all my students, or I can not do anything and hope that the web page is still up when I get back to it, or I can awkwardly set a time for the announcement to post.
    
    My comments about voting was not to say that every idea should be implemented. Honestly, I am not sure I think this "suggest an idea and hope that enough people who actually like it read your idea and vote for it before time is up" is really a good idea. My frustration is that this idea did get sufficient votes, has a comment from Canvas indicating that it will be implemented, and more than a year later....nothing. No indication if it will ever be implemented, yet anyone posting this idea again simply gets referred back to this thread. It kind of undermines any confidence that posting ideas and voting on them is at all meaningful.
    
    Certainly, the people on this forum are helpful, and I thank them for that.
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    - dhulsey@nmjc.edu @ Brandon Davies on Oct 17, 2016 8:48 PM
      Yes, I am a bit saddened that we have not seen any movement on the project for announcements that Peyton Craighill referred to last year. Even a note that this project has been delayed until 2017 to make room for other big projects like the new Quizzing would be nice. As it is, I am sort of feeling like this request has fallen through the cracks and demonstrates the danger of archiving requests with the promise of future development.
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Renee Carney Oct 27, 2016 9:14 PM
Idea is currently in Product Radar Learn more about this stage...
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- Brandon Davies @ Renee Carney on Feb 17, 2017 8:10 AM
  Product Radar seems like a step backwards here. Seems to indicate that this important fix has gone from part of a "larger Announcements enhancements effort" to "we have no plans to implement this idea any time soon but we aren't going to kill it outright so users retain some glimmer of hope" (i.e. product radar). My guess is that the way Announcements are currently coded makes implementing this very simple and sensible idea impossible. Thus implementation requires a complete rewrite of how announcements are handled. If this is the case, I wish someone would just come out and say that. Otherwise there really is no excuse for not implementing this idea.
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Shannon Brown May 4, 2017 12:33 PM
I'd love to see this feature. It's a problem when I import a course and all previously saved announcements are automatically published. What I really want, though, is to be able to work on an announcement over more than one work session. Often my announcements involve complex student feedback that is compiled as I grade many announcements. I need to save announcement drafts because otherwise my work is lost if I need to temporarily log off my computer. Keeping them unpublished until complete would do this job just fine.
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- Shannon Brown @ Shannon Brown on May 4, 2017 12:43 PM
  I meant grade many assignments. :-)
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- fernerj@erau.edu @ Shannon Brown on May 4, 2017 8:31 PM
  I can recall a few times where I had entered a masterpiece of feedback and then accidentally pressed a key which refreshed the page. Now that I have multiple monitors I am very keen to first write the text in Notepad and then copy into the Canvas Announcement and then apply formatting. Thinking out loud, an auto save of any draft text would be tres chic.
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Lindsay Gaughan Aug 29, 2017 1:12 PM
Has this issue been resolved? Seems like you've been working on it for over a year now?
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- Renee Carney @ Lindsay Gaughan on Aug 31, 2017 9:10 AM
  Lindsay Gaughan
  The bummer of the story is that this project never made it through the prioritization. In the thread above Peyton said that he hoped it would, along with another communications project, but they didn't. This idea remains on our radar though - as one that we'd like to prioritize in the future. Follow this idea to get updates when they're available!
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  - dhulsey@nmjc.edu @ Renee Carney on Aug 31, 2017 12:33 PM
    That is disappointing, Renee Carney. I do appreciate that you have provided a status update to this feature request though as I had indeed been wondering why there was not a follow up after Peyton's optimistic post.
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John Hart Sep 15, 2017 9:34 PM
A simple 'end date' window will solve the problem of having future semester announcements being automatically published. This is a basic feature in all LMS systems I've used. Canvas provides it in quizzes and discussion board areas, why isn't it included with announcements? I brought this up well over a year ago, and the suggestion went nowhere. Like other instructors have mentioned previously, there is a need to recycle announcements each semester, and if they are closed, it's not a problem to create a new open/close date when it's convenient. This feature needs to be added now.
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- dhulsey@nmjc.edu @ John Hart on Sep 16, 2017 11:36 AM
  I much prefer publish and unpublish to dates. Having both is fine because that creates a choice for announcement management, but I hate setting dates on each item. It is tedious.
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- Lindsay Gaughan @ John Hart on Sep 28, 2017 12:21 PM
  Yes dates could work and should be there as well but publishing and unpublishing would be much easier as a simple toggle on n off than adding/updating end dates - especially when they are automatically copied from course to course. But the option to also delete several at a time after they are all copied over would be nice as well.
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John Aubert Jan 25, 2018 4:01 PM
I am overjoyed to read this suggestion, and I support it wholeheartedly!!! When copying a course to a new semester, I do not what to have to go back and reset each individual posting date. This could be accomplished with a number of approaches - please pick one and go with it!
1) Publish/Unpublish feature with Unpublish as the default when copying
2) Allow and End Date, with the default set to end on the day a course is copied (thus masking it until the instructor chooses)
3) When setting the delay option, allow for "delay indefinitely" and default to "delay indefinitely" when copying.

Again, please pick an option and proceed. The current setup is cumbersome for folks who want control over announcements...
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Seon Chun-Burbank Mar 19, 2018 9:45 PM
I have been thinking about this for over two years - just saw a new look about Announcement - Delayed..., which is an improved feature but I still need to change date every time I teach a course. Anyhow, after seeing the new feature, I was about to make a suggestion on this idea and viola! Great minds think alike! I think having a publish button will be much less labor intensive.
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John Hart Mar 20, 2018 1:42 PM
I find it very frustrating that this discussion has been ongoing since Dallas Hulsey originated the idea almost three years ago! For those who don't know, the 'publish/unpublish' and/or 'open/close date'
window features have been available to college administrators for a long time. Why can't this admin code be implemented into the instructor shells? Everyone who has contributed their thoughts on this are all valid points. The solution is to offer both features of 'publish/unpublish' and 'open/close' windows which should satisfy all instructors to utilize either feature of their own preference.
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- dhulsey@nmjc.edu @ John Hart on Mar 20, 2018 5:59 PM
  Well stated, John. I keep hoping to see this feature show up in the release notes, but so many feature requests seem to be "on the radar."
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Judy Harmon Apr 10, 2018 9:39 AM
Please keep this feature in the pipeline to be added with some type of start/end dates. I like to keep the Announcements as part of the course history/archive and not just delete them, but I would like to have them removed from the Announcement thread.
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Kenny Hirschmann May 10, 2018 9:12 AM
I think it's fair to say that most of us are fans of Canvas, and think that the benefits far outweigh the costs compared to most other products out there. But I have to admit, there are about 2-3 features that users have been asking for, for years now, that are so basic and fundamental that it almost seems laughable that it hasn't been done yet. This is one of those (along with the student image uploads in discussions). This is such a pain point and an annoyance for faculty, semester after semester to have to go through 2-3 courses and either delete or delay potentially dozens of announcements. That time could be much better spent planning learning activities and assessments. Come on Instructure, what are you waiting for?
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John Hart May 11, 2018 4:44 PM
This idea was initially suggested by Dallas Hulsey back in 2015! I also started a conversation on it shortly afterward. Having the ability to 'publish / unpublish' and 'open / close' date windows for announcements is so basic that it should be an embarassment to the Canvas developers that this has not been addressed by now. I learned from one of my schools that administrators have both features so it satisfies the needs for those who want to use either option. Since Canvas already has the code implemented at the administration level, it mystifies me why they cannot get these options setup for instructors.
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