Deleting a Course permission role: how do I know if anyone is using it?

[jwelchans]

I am trying to clean up the course role permissions for our instance and we have a couple course-roles that we have created that probably need to be deleted. 

Is there a way to know if anyone is using those roles before I delete them?

Or, maybe the more relevant question is, what happens if I delete a role that someone is using?

For example:

We have role called Professional Learner.  If I delete that role, and there are users who have been added to a course as Professional Learners, what will happen?  Will they no longer be in that course? Will I get an error/alert message?

Sidenote: For the Account permissions side, I found this very helpful document & script from James Jones for pulling a report of Admin Users & their roles.

Thanks for any guidance you can offer a very green admin!

[kona]

 @jwelchans , I'm not sure of the answer to this question, but I'm going to share this with the https://community.canvaslms.com/groups/canvas-developers?sr=search&searchId=520d8164-dee2-48fa-bcbd-...‌ group to see if they can help. I'll also formally tag  @James ‌ on this as well since you mentioned a script he had written that was related to this.

[jwelchans]

Thanks for tagging him,  @kona ‌.  I tried originally but I couldn't (and still can't) figure out how to tag him.  I type @ james and he doesn't show in the People list, then if I try @ jamesjones - there aren't any People listed.  Tried with a period (james.jones) and then I just gave up. 

Thanks for your help here.

[kona]

No problem, one way to tag him is to try @ james_jones (and then look for his profile picture, if you know what to look for). Otherwise the other trick is to either (1) go to his profile page in the Community and copy and paste the URL to that page in your message - it will automatically change from the full URL to "James Jones" (it's actually cool to watch this happen) OR (2) if you go to where he is already tagged (like in my previous message) you can right click (on a PC) and copy the link address and then paste it into your message and it will flip to "James Jones."

Hope this helps!

[jwelchans]

Man, that is what I get for giving up.  Underscore instead of period.   @James ‌ - success!

And I had to try the pasting option too to see the "flipping" animation. Pretty slick. 

Thanks again!

[James · Accepted solution]

 @jwelchans  

I need to update my document -- the course roles can be obtained by the Provisioning Report, so that will let you find everyone who has a certain course role quickly.

The other question was interesting and I didn't know the answer. Rather than search for the answer, which may or may not be there, I decided to test it.

I created a course role called TESTING ROLE and added one of our fake testing accounts to it in a course.  Then I went in and accepted the invitation, then went back and deleted the course role.

When I tried to delete the role, I got this pop up.

I clicked OK and then went into the course with the student.

The student was still there with the non-existent role.

However, when I go to the account page for that person, it shows them listed as a "Teacher" (that was the parent role I used to create the "TESTING ROLE").

However, when I look at the enrollments in the course from the People page filter, I don't get a "TESTING ROLE" and I get only one "Teacher" instead of 2.

My suggestion would be to find all the people that have that course role and change their enrollment in that course before you delete the role. It appears that deleting a role that has active enrollments may result in unintended behavior.

[jwelchans]

Holy cow, thank you SO MUCH for the thorough and detailed answer.  That provided all I was needing to know and more.

Even being walked-through your testing process was insightful for me and will help in the future.

Many thanks!

[James]

Also note that I did the testing in our beta instance. That way if I did screw something up, it's only messed up for a week at most. For those who may not know how to get to the beta instance, see How do I access the Canvas beta environment as an instructor? and https://community.canvaslms.com/events/1935-utilize-your-beta-instance