In the calendar I'd like to see a way to toggle the view from one child to another. Vital for parents, teaching assistants and other observers. Example:
This is not a new idea and has been requested before. Thanks to everyone involved in the following pages:
Parental observation in canvas complicated with three children!
Reorganise Observer dashboard to view student courses more clearly.
So important in a K12 world. A parent with multiple children has so many courses and this would make their lives much easier.
This is huge for our families! We need this ASAP!!!!!! This needs to be more than just the calendar, ALL OF CANVAS!!!! Peter Nickson thanks for submitting AGAIN! The parent app is nice but it does not solve this issue.
Agreed - we'd like this to work on the website and the calendar is just a start. The specified item was not found. - can you help promote this idea?
Not just parents, thinking also of learning support assistants, language support assistants and teaching assistants that work with a number of individual students in different years or a small number of students in different subjects.
And academic advisors!
Thank you for this submission. If you use the Canvas Parent App, there is a very nice toggle experience for parents. Find more in these guides:
Renee Carney We use the app but the need is still there for the webstie. The app only does certain things. The app is not the answer to this problem.
That's great that you use the app, and I totally understand that it is not the answer for all situations. Just wanted to make sure that you were aware that the app was a much more pleasant experience!
Hi Renee. I've used the parent app too and we're discouraging its use for the time being. After the parent app is set up it can be a good experience, but there are some major barriers to the adoption of the parent app that we've highlighted here Parents Access to Canvas and in the comments here Parental observation in canvas complicated with three children!
We are in the same position. We do not have the parent app turned on and at this time have no plans to do so. We have our parents going through the web interface and really need that control to switch between students.
Thank you for the link to the discussion. I hadn't seen this thread yet, and I did pass it on to our mobile team as an FYI.
Had quick chat with Michael about this. Might be a permissions issue with the Observer being able to access the features. He is going to have a think about this and some other things..
We could definitely use a better set of features around observing multiple children. We have a use case where some of our students remotely take their "content" classes (Math, English, Science, etc.) through our online school set up in Canvas while physically attending a "Social Skills" classroom or other type of SpEd resource room as a support while they work on the content. The aides working with them in their physical location may need to keep track of 5 or 6 students who are each taking multiple classes with us and have a clear sense of which students are staying on pace in which classes.
Generally, our district does not issue cell phones to employees (particularly not for hourly employees like classified SpEd aides) but rather provides computers in the classrooms. This makes an app-based solution unhelpful.
I've had a go at creating a solution to this idea myself. It's not perfect, but works:
I love the potential behind this request!
While Canvas Parent has definitely made it easier to be actively involved with a student's, and more specifically, students', progress, there are gaps. As other Community Members have pointed out, not schools utilize Canvas Parent. Because Canvas Parent is still rather new, not all of the web-based features are available on the app...and the app is meant to increase efficiency, not to necessarily be a replacement for the web interface. Right now, while parents at my school like the simplicity of the app and being able to set custom alerts, many rely on the browser to find teacher comments, rubric scores, etc.
If this "toggle" was available to observers - school staff and families - it would really simplify the web experience. To have the information about a particular student in one space without having to create a separate observer account for each student would be amazing.
Keep the conversation rolling. The collaboration and discussions are so valuable!
Not that I am aware of, but this is a great idea!
For those of you who voted here -- this may be of interest!
This is my first day with this, but all of my kids stuff are all jumbled together. I need to see each one individually! Where's the toggle option?!?
Dacia Ringenberg ~ Unfortunately, this is an idea that is open for voting, not an already-existing feature for Canvas. I have offered some suggestions within conversations here. I hope these ideas are helpful in the meantime.
When researching a toggle option the guide says to use the Settings button on the app and my kids names will appear and I can toggle from there. But NO - when I press Settings a list of all my kids' classes just shows up. My kids names are not listed anywhere on this app or on a desk top. This issue has been discussed in at least one more Find Answers discussion for a while. Is there a solution coming soon?
Hi Carla Fiorella and 
The Observer role is awesome, but it isn't without its complexities. Please see some tips I've written for Observers of all kinds in A Letter To Canvas Observers. I hope it adds some clarity to what you can and cannot do with the Observer role.
You say "on the app", so I assume that you are referring to Canvas Parent. If you have linked your students to your Observer account (How do I link a student to my user account as an observer?), you should be able to easily switch between your students on the app.
Right now, this feature idea for toggling between students is for the desktop/browser version of Canvas. Right now, this idea is in the very preliminary stages, so there is not a solution at the moment, nor is there anything on an official timeline. (You can read about the voting process here:How does the feature idea process work?)
I have the parent app, and it will not allow me to toggle between children. Matter of fact, I am the only name listed. When I try to put on the + and add a child, and then click students, it gives me some error message that it can't allow me to see the next page. I am so frustrated with this app!
Dacia
I'm really sorry to hear that you're frustrated. There is a chance that your district has not enabled the app for their observer accounts. Before troubleshooting further, I would contact your district's technology department and Canvas administrator to see if they've made Canvas Parent available for families.
It looks like this has been untouched for the last year, but I am new to canvas and looking for a solution. My hope was that in changing the nickname I could reorganize the dashboard. However, their doesn't seem to be an option to "sort by nickname". Hoping this would be an easy temp solution while you work on the big issue.
I did use the solution shared here to color code each child, which helps somewhat on the calendar, though having a way to turn each on/off would be amazing.
Sad that this post is from so long ago! When will the changes be made? My students' parents would love this!
Would love to see this implemented ASAP. I am also disappointed that this post is from so long ago. It would be a great improvement for all parents that have multiple kids. Even having two kids in middle school at the same time I was never able to see all of their classes on the calendar and it was difficult to switch from one child to the next and make sure all of their classes were selected.
Is there any update from Canvas?
[I'm using the web client on a laptop]
It is hard to believe this basic fundamental feature is still not available here at the end of 2019.
I do see a student selection dropdown now in Calendar, but no selection dropdown in Dashboard or Courses where it is needed just as much. Preferably, you would just add a filter in the main navigation somehow to show "All Data" "Student A" "Student B" "Student C" etc. not a dropdown on each page, but I'd take anything for this now, INCLUDING JUST SORTING BY STUDENT FIRST.
My general reaction as a parent is... the web client is 80% right and needs a few tweaks like this one, the Android client is 33% right and needs a lot of work... I know you want to put your development dollars to work smartly, but leaving simple things like this undone for years leaves a bad taste.
Please push this up your priority list, minor implementation cost, huge productivity gain for parents/observers of more than 1 student.
Hi anyone who's interested in a temporary solution. Some students I teach came up with a great solution to this here..
canvas/script.js at master · kingalfred/canvas · GitHub
You can add that to your javascript in the global theme.
Points to note
1) All observers will have a drop down appear in the calendar view. Great for parents and teaching assistants.
2) Other users may also have a drop down (feel free to fix this canvas)
3) As the code relies on being able to display multiple calendars you should double check how many courses you would expecta parent to be able to view at the same time. Canvas by default will only show a maximum of 10, so as some students do more than 10 subjects and are enrolled in more than 10 courses, I had to ask my customer success manager to increase this.
4) It's worth knowing some JS first. There are some other functions you may wish to remove.
5) My students came up with a handy bit of JS to change the color of the favicon when in beta or test environment. This proved to be very useful when testing. Canvas... Simple but useful feature please.
Hoping to have something to share soon.....