You are wrong that this feature is "hardly necessary". I have gathered that the feature that automatically marks assignments missing does not work with externally submitted assignments. My school almost entirely uses externally submitted assignments (typically Google Docs cloud assignments). Because these are not automatically marked as missing, I have to spend an inordinate amount of time individually marking every single assignment as missing. Canvas desperately needs to add a feature in the speed grader where an assignment can be quickly marked "missing" or "excused", or whatever. Also helpful might be a feature in the gradebook where you can automatically mark every zero as missing or something.
My other gradebook, Skyward, allows me to open an assignment and just go down the roster and check a little box for "missing" or "excused". It is much faster than Canvas and this is a feature that Canvas seriously needs to fix.
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