Disable/Deactivate User at Account Level

[wmack]

This idea was previously submitted, but didn't get enough votes.  We need your help to make it happen this time around.

At my institution, if a student does not pay in time for a course, is unreachable by multiple forms of communication, and passes a given grace period, we temporarily conclude the enrollment in every active course the student’s Canvas account appears in.

Problems with this approach:

• Students become confused/frustrated with Canvas because they think there is a Canvas error (they can see the course in the Courses tab but not on the dashboard)
• If a student was in the course at the time of the concluded enrollment, the course "breaks (they assignments won't work, they can't submit assignments, etc.)
• This is a huge time drain on our staff to conclude each course for multiple students.  Sometimes there are 10-15 courses depending on the major.
• A professor cannot enter past grades for the student in the gradebook and has to keep track of their grades separately until their access is restored.  Our faculty is very frustrated with Canvas by this.
• There is human error in forgetting to restore a course - student becomes frustrated.

As our programs (especially our online program) grows, we are very concerned that we will not be able to keep up with the workload.  This is inefficient at best and not a good practice.

Solution

We NEED a way to deactivate a user at the account level instead of manually removing them from each course.  This will save our staff time and will allow our professors to continue keeping track of their students grades.

[jehlen]

This would be a very helpful tool for us due to the time savings that would result.  I would greatly encourage that this would be a capability and option that be made available.

[jphillipps]

As a member of the accounting staff, I would agree that the current process is cumbersome and needlessly complicated. A more streamline solution would be much appreciated!

[Renee_Carney]

Thank you for your Feature Idea submission. We wanted to call your attention to   which was submitted in a different voting period, but archived due to lack of votes or inadequate response. You may want to reference this idea for insight.

Since archived ideas can be re-submitted, your idea will be open for vote in the next voting cycle.

In the meantime, help your idea gain traction by posting a link to this idea in the comments of the other, archived idea (which will notify author and anyone who is following the idea) and share your idea to colleagues and peers as well.

[wmack]

One of our faculty just emailed me when she saw a student missing from her course.  When she learned that this was because it was Canvas's way of disabling the account, she stated that "the implication is that Canvas may not be trustworthy, and I know you guys want to prevent that impression."

[bprice]

I'm the faculty member Wendy is referring to. When I went into Canvas to enter some grades, one of my students had disappeared from the grade book, and I had no idea why. I assumed it was a glitch with Canvas until I contacted our support team.

[Renee_Carney]

This idea has moved to the next stage and will be open for voting among the Canvas Community, from Wed. December 7, 2016 - Wed. March 1, 2017.

Check out this doc for additional details about how the voting process works!

[snugent]

I can think of other use cases for this feature as well. When we were still on our past LMS we had a very disruptive student in an online course. We temporary disabled his access until the matter was addressed by student services. We need this feature in the Canvas admin as well.

[nprince]

This would be a very helpful feature for our institution as it would greatly streamline the process of activating/deactivating users. Most of our larger applications support this functionality and it would be great to see Canvas add this feature.

[ddham]

Having access to student files to do grading is a must and should not be cut off for any reason. I am experiencing such a problem at this time. As a result, I am not able to write in the comments for an assignment nor give a grade. Now, as it stands, I will have to regroup my thinking at a later date to post the grade and comments much after I am completed with the grading the assignment. The procedure to cut the professor from completing the grading must be changed. There are other ways administration can stop a student who needs to address issues pertinent to their being a student in good standing. I hope this will be changed favorably so professors can do their work without roadblocks and hindrances.

[jthompson5]

As part of the Online program that this would impact, I can attest to the time and frustration that this feature would cut back on. This feature is integral to the continued success of our program. Please push this forward and make it a reality.

[cchambers]

I ran into a problem with this over the past semester. I had to manually keep track of grades for a particular student and remember to re-enter them when access was restored. This is a very necessary feature.

[cward]

We're reworking the user/course account-level settings, and will consider adding this as a feature at that time. I understand the frustration and unnecessary work added by not having this.

[estradak]

A definite necessity!  We have to have a way to block users for various reasons.

[bl]

We're fully online and this would be a real timesaver. Is it correct to assume teacher's would continue to have the ability to grade assignments?

[estradak]

Another reason this is a necessity:

I currently have over 10 students that are being withdrawn due to state attendance laws and it has taken me over an hour to deactivate only 2 students in all of their courses. 

[mcsmith]

Hi All,

First off, thank you for your participation and input in the community. We are trying to work through the solution for this idea.

I am wondering if anyone has thoughts on how you would re-activate a student that was previously deactivated from all of their courses? When re-activating do folks face the same frustrations that you currently face when deactivating? I am particularly interested in use cases that you would likely run into. Would the departments (registrar, accounting, etc.) need to re-activate them in a few classes or all the classes that the student had previously be de-activated from?

I really appreciate your feedback and thoughts on this in advance!

[tdurbin]

When you delete a user, it removes them from all of their courses. This is a problem.

If you cannot bulk assign an inactive, & have to go in one course at a time to make them inactive, that is super time consuming & not very effective for managing. Especially if a user has hundreds of courses in their profile list.

When you reactivate a user, it does not always re-assign them to the courses they were previously enrolled in, so this is the same issue as above. You have to go through one at a time, track down every previous course, verify they were added/not added & repeat.

For instance, when you delete a user account, it pulls them from all of their enrollments.
When an instructor leaves, we want to remove their access to Canvas, but we still need to be able to look into the courses they were a part of, but if they were 'deleted', they are not searchable & their past enrollments cannot be viewed.

[cms_hickss]

This would be very useful for Admins too. A way to suspend access to the LMS. Especially, in cases where an employee or teacher is removed from their position and should not be able to access the system; but you still need to see all the interactions that user has done. 

[Renee_Carney]

The Radar idea stage has been removed from the Feature Idea Process.  You can read more about why in the blog post Adaptation: Feature Idea Process Changes.

This change will only impact the stage sort of this idea and will not change how it is voted on or how it is considered during prioritization activities.  This change will streamline the list of ideas 'open for voting', making it easier for you to see the true top voted ideas in one sort, here.

[cfrodrig]

We'd like to see this functionality added to Canvas. Regardless of whether the user has an active session in the mobile app or via a browser, if disabling/deactivating their user can end those sessions or cause any following clicks/actions to throw an error, such as access being denied, we think this would be great. We use CAS authentication at our institution, and when we need to block LMS access, we update the login ID, so that despite a successful CAS authentication, the user receives the "Canvas doesn't have an account for..." message, due to the mismatch. This solution doesn't help if the user is already in Canvas with an active session via a browser or has an existing mobile app token.