As a new admin, there are probably some new terms you are still getting acquainted with, and today, I want to highlight two of them: production and beta. These are the two types of “environments” where your Canvas content can live. As an admin, it is important to be aware of these two different environments and in what situations they would be most beneficial.
Production Environment:
This is known as “where the magic happens”, aka your “living” Canvas environment. This is the space where all your users will interact, courses will take place, and users are logging in and participating in course content. This is the instance faculty and students are aware of and actively using. The production environment is designed for day-to-day use and provides a consistent experience for all users. Additionally, any changes or updates introduced to the production environment have undergone rigorous testing to ensure the user experience is not interrupted.
Beta Environment:
This is known as the “Canvas playground” or where you go with any changes you're wanting to make but are unsure of how they will impact your institution. If this situation applies to you, I recommend testing in your beta environment (organization.beta.instructure.com). In this environment, you can test using your real data without impacting your live production environment. Here you can add users, change the CSS, and/or troubleshoot issues without impacting your production instance.
The beta environment also allows you to explore new features before they reach production. It is overwritten with data from the production environment every Saturday, meaning the work or content you add to your beta environment will be overwritten every week. Think of it like a preview version where new functionalities and/or updates can be experimented with or evaluated by a group of users like admin, instructional designers, accreditation teams, and more. Because of this, beta is usually limited to users with a root account or sub-account admin role.
The purpose of the beta instance is to identify and fix any potential issues or bugs before they impact the live production instance of Canvas. You will notice in parts of the Community, Product will ask for feedback on new features while they are in beta to help ensure the changes are functioning as intended and issues are resolved before rolling out to all users. If you want to keep up on the latest features in Canvas or provide feedback, visit the Release Notes page in the Community.
You can also learn more about the beta environment in the following Community guides:
- How do I access the Canvas beta environment as an admin?
- What is the Canvas release schedule for the beta environment?
Finally, I’ve included a quick go-to resource on the differences between the production and beta environments:
| Task | Production | Beta |
| New Features | Monthly on the 3rd Saturday of the month | Code preview for next month on the third Saturday |
| Refresh Cycle | Never- what happens in production, stays in production | Every Saturday with a snapshot from Production |
| Deploys (Bug Fixes) | Every other Wednesday | Every other Thursday |
| Email Notifications | Enabled | Disabled |
| Testing LTIs | Available | Not Available |
