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 To further develop this feature, it would be nice if Announcements were unpublished on import, meaning the instructor can see them but the students can't. With a "publish button on every announcement, instructors could release announcements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.

112 Comments

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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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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 When a previous course is imported, the Announcements are sent out even if the course is Unpublished.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 It would be nice if they came over unpublished and then the instructor can reuse and publish the announcements as needed.
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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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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?
1. A Send button automatically Publishes the announcement.
2. 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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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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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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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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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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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