[ARCHIVED] Posting an Announcement to Multiple Courses at Once

[jolliej]

Original Topic Name: As a program manager, how can I make one announcement, such as important semester deadlines, registration alerts, local job posting, etc., to all of the classes in my area?

Anyone out there know how to post one announcement to numerous courses at once?

[Chris_Hofer]

 @jolliej ​...

I don't have an answer for you, but I wanted to let you know I am going to move the wording for your subject line of this posting to the body of the message.  I'll also give the topic a shortened title and tag your posting with keywords.  Doing these things will make it easier for other people to search for similar questions.  I hope this is ok with you.

[awilliams]

Hey  @jolliej ​, while you can't post an announcement to multiple courses with the Graphical User Interface of Canvas, you can send a message to everyone in multiple courses. This could be a viable alternative. I've included a quick screen recording of how to select groups of people or all people in multiple courses when composing a message. The only way to post announcements to multiple courses at once that I am aware of would be to use the Application Programming Interface.

[jolliej]

​Thanks, I will use this for now. 

[kona]

I second what awilliams​ suggested - to send a message to everyone - but also wanted to add that there is a feature request for something similar - that you might want to vote/comment on. If you don't feel this is exactly what you are looking for you can also create a newCanvas Feature Idea. For more information on how feature ideas work see the following guides How do I create a new feature idea? and How does the voting process work for feature ideas?​

[bbrywczynski]

Kona,

I am an academic instructor at a career tech high school.  The request you mentioned above is a little confusing to me.  As an instructor, am I at the Sub-Account level?  And if that request is realized, will I then be able to post one announcement for all 6 of my classes?  Thanks

Brandon Brywczynski

[kona]

 @bbrywczynski ​, the use of sub-accounts vary from Institution to Institution, but in general most instructors/teachers are not at the sub-account level unless they are in charge of a specific program. For example our welding coordinator, who is a teacher, has sub account access to all of the welding courses for every instructor because he's in charge of them and needs to be able to get in and see what's going 24/7.

Does that help?

[bbrywczynski]

It does a bit. By that definition I don’t think I have a sub account then. I’m obviously responsible for my 6 courses, but not anything more than that. Not being able to post an announcement to all our courses at once is certainly important to many teachers at my school. It’s been frustrating not being able to do that since we had that capability with MyBigCampus. Thank you for your prompt response and I’ll keep an eye on the Community for further info.

[kona]

I just found this feature idea - - you might want to comment on why this would be useful for you!

[csharple]

Sending a message to groups of people does not solve a problem I am having, which is that I want to roll out delayed announcements about upcoming speakers to more than one class.  The delay posting feature in the announcements works perfectly, I just need it to work so that the announcement is going to more than one class.

[kona]

Sounds like you would need to create a Canvas Feature Ideas​ for this.

[DanielbSmith]

This is not solved. The proposed solution is a workaround. I want to be able to create a single announcement and change the settings to have it populate to all courses (or selected courses/sections) that I teach. The option for sections is there already. Sending messages to everyone is hidden. I want the announcements visible on the course page. As of now I am creating once, copying, and posting to new announcements but that is not a good use of my time. I want this simple quality of life feature added for course administrators. 

[gabriel-solomon]

Dear Colleagues,

I have a clunky workaround that has worked for me for over 3 years. I hope it helps some of you.

1. Create a tumblr.com blog (or use any other RSS feed tool)
2. Get the link of your blog's RSS feed. You must use the RSS feed's link, not the blog's link.
   1. For example, for the blog https://www.tumblr.com/artworkbyrese the RSS feed is https://artworkbyrese.tumblr.com/rss
   2. If you go to the RSS feed link, it should look like a bunch of xml code. If you look within it, you should see the text of your post.
3. Connect the RSS feed to your class's Canvas external feed in Announcements.
   
   1. You can do this for ALL of your classes that you wish to receive the blog posts.
4. Test if this works by posting a single post to your blog., For each class, you should see an  announcement show up delayed in about 4-8 hours.

PS I don't know why it is delayed 4-8 hours.  But, the delay is fine for 99% of my purposes.

PSS. If you like this post, don't forget to give me thumbs up like/kudos. 🙂

-Gabriel

[Ron_Bowman]

There is announcement redesign which may have some of what is being asked for in this post.  You can copy the announcement to other courses.  I do not use announcements much, so I do not know how the copy part works - i.e. do you have to go to the other course and perform some minor edits.

Ron

[gabriel-solomon]

Dear Colleagues,

Thanks.  I was not aware of this method.

The announcement redesign does not allow you to post to multiple courses “at once”, as the original request asked.  But, it is a work around if you want to copy each announcement manually to each course 1-by-1.

The blog tumblr RSS method does allow posting to multiple courses at once.  After you set it up and post to your blog/RSS, all of your courses will automatically receive the announcement. 

1 single post can go to as many courses as you wish, at once.

Anyhow, just a heads up to anyone looking at this.

Namaste,

-Gabriel

[JonathanCapogro]

Hi jolliej, I am also a Program Manager and I am hoping to find this solution also...It seems that there is a feature that exists, called  +Multicourse Announcement, but at the institution where I work, I do not see this feature as an option when I search Canvas.