[ARCHIVED] Push Notification for Discussions Now Unsupported

[brillhart]

Last semester I set my notifications so that Discussion posts would push immediately to my iPhone via the Teacher app. I told my students if they had questions about material to post there as I don't have push notifications for my email (my phone would be beeping all day). However, this semester I am not getting those notifications and when I checked my settings it now says push notifications for Discussion is "unsupported". What?! I made a big deal of telling students they should post to the discussion instead of emailing me. Why would this change? How can it be changed back? Or are there any suggestions on a work around where a student can send me a question and it will be sent to me via immediate push notification?

[scottdennis]

Hello @brillhart 

Last term were you receiving notifications via the Canvas app on your phone or were you receiving SMS notifications.  If it was the latter, please see https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/The-Canvas-tl-dr/Streamlining-Canvas-Push-Notifications/ba-p/4255...

[Theycallmekc]

I’ve been having the same issue.  Before, I received the notifications through the Canvas app, but now it’s saying that the push notification is unsupported. I can still get the notifications for discussion posts via email, but I would prefer having the push notification.

[brillhart]

I contacted Canvas support and they eliminated push notifications for Discussion posts in the January 2021 update. There is an idea conversation started about this since I am not the only person this affects: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Bring-back-push-notifications-for-discussion-b...

[nelson_hannah]

This was one of the only redeeming features of Canvas Discussions! Please bring it back ASAP, it is absolutely essential otherwise students and instructors have no idea when somebody has replied to their post. Without push notifications, it's not possible to keep up with discussions, especially since Canvas has not adopted the reverse-chronological order of posts that all other chat/discussion platforms use (to enable seeing the newest posts first, without having to scroll all the way down the page).

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello there, @nelson_hannah ...

I have some potentially good news for you re: the last part of your comment:

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@nelson_hannah wrote:

Without push notifications, it's not possible to keep up with discussions, especially since Canvas has not adopted the reverse-chronological order of posts that all other chat/discussion platforms use (to enable seeing the newest posts first, without having to scroll all the way down the page).

---

I'm not sure if you've seen the following posting, but you might want to take a look at: Discussions Redesign Early Access - Instructure Community.  Specifically, take a look at the third bullet point under 1st Release.  It says, "newest replies will appear on the top of page 1 instead of the bottom of the last page".

The Discussion Redesign may not be "live" for your school's Canvas environment right now, but this would be something for you to look forward to.  I'm sure that your school's local Canvas administrator(s) will be making decisions about when they might be enabling the new "look" to Discussions...but they may also wait until the redesign is rolled out to all Canvas customers.  That would be a decision that your school will need to make for everyone involved at your school.

I hope this will be of some help to you.

[Felderburg]

Hi, my school started using Canvas this semester, and so far I really like it. However, both of my classes have used an 'introduce yourself' type discussion, and the notifications for discussions are terrible. Currently, it seems like there is no option for me to only get notified of replies to the posts I make? Is that correct? I can only get an immediate email, or summary emails, for *any* reply to a discussion, even if it's not mine? I have currently resorted to using ctrl+f to find my specific posts by my name, to see if there is an individual response.

I can see how some discussion topics might warrant this sort of thing, but I get the feeling that most of these classes' posts will be a 'reply to the topic and then a few classmates' sort of thing, and it is absolutely untenable to get an email with just dozens of posts that aren't relevant to me.

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi there, @Felderburg ...

I believe your assessment of how discussion reply notifications work in Canvas is correct.  I can see where getting notified of replies that aren't relevant to you could get overwhelming and unnecessary.  I found this document which outlines what those notification settings mean:

Canvas Notifications - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com) -- scroll about half-way down the screen to the area on "Discussions".

It looks like you are a relatively new member here in the Community, so you may not yet be able to submit new Feature Ideas until you have more participation in the Community.  But, I would suggest that once you "rank up", that you create a new Feature Idea about this so that others can evaluate it and give it a star rating (just one of the ways that Instructure gets feedback on what they want to see in Canvas).

• How do idea conversations work in the Instructure Community?
• What is the feature development process for Instructure products?
• How do I create a new idea conversation in the Instructure Community?

Also, check out this blog posting: Welcome New Members - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

I hope this info will be of some help to you.  Sing out if you have any other questions!