[ARCHIVED] Student assignments copied to public "unfiled" folder

[mphowey]

My class involves a lot of video assignments, submitted as media recordings. This last week all student assignment submissions have also started appearing in an "unfiled" folder under Files. Not only is this quickly taking up all of the course site's memory, but students are able to see everybody's assignment uploads. If I set the unfiled folder to be not visible to students, the next submission will just create a new folder (unfiled 2) which is also public. Is anyone else experiencing this? Why are private student assignments suddenly viewable to the entire class?

[smclean]

Yes, We getting reports of this happening today as well.

[lawreaf]

An instructor contacted me to let me know this was happening in her courses yesterday as well in our instance. I've done some testing on my end and here's what I've found so far:

• The issue seems to be contained to the "Media Recorder". When you create an assignment with Submission Type set to "Online" and check the "Media Recordings" option, students have the option to use the "Record/Upload Media Content": 
  
• When students use either option here: "Upload Media" OR "Record Media", then Canvas creates a folder in Files titled "Unfiled".
• The files in this folder are public to students if they navigate there. Students do get notifications about the files if they have notifications for new files turned on.
• In my testing this did not happen with all assignment file uploads, or any other type of assignment. It seems to be confined to the "Media Recordings" option.
• Unfortunately, it's no use deleting this folder. I confirmed that this does not delete the actual student submissions, however new submissions of this type simply generate the folder anew. The same is the case for renaming the folder.  Once renamed, the renamed folder remains static, as if it's any other user created folder, but new Media Recordings generate a NEW "Unfiled" folder where any further Media Records are placed.

[kona]

Hello! lawreaf, smclean, &   @mphowey  

This is a pretty crazy issue and if you haven't already, please make sure to submit a Help ticket about this to Canvas Support. This will not only let Canvas Support know how widespread of an issue it is but also ensures that you are made aware of the status of this issue and when it might be resolved. 

Along with this, if you have heard from support with an official update, could you let us know what they've had to say?

Thank you! Kona

[smclean]

I submitted the issue to Instructure on the 22nd.  They responded today with this.

"Thank you for contacting Canvas Support.

Looking over this I found that this is a behavior that our engineers are looking into. We have a open engineering ticket for this behavior,  I am going to add you to this ticket. You will receive updates to this open engineering ticket when the information becomes available. 

I am sorry for any inconvenience."

[mphowey]

Thank you for doing this! I'm new to using this forum and still figuring out the proper channels. Please, keep us posted!

[lawreaf · Accepted solution]

Update 3:30 PST: I reached out to our customer care team and they responded:

 I connected with our support and engineering organizations and it looks like the fix was just deployed to beta and production to address the bug. That means no additional student media recorder submissions should be going into the unfiled folder.

I have tested this in my own instance in two courses and confirmed that yes indeed the issues seems to be resolved.

[kona]

Yay! Thanks for the update!