[Account Settings] More intuitive term sorting/presentation

[SethBattis]

So, my impression is that terms are sorted based on date and, perhaps, name. But it doesn't seem consistent. For example, here's the term order on the admin Terms page, which appears to be in descending order by start date, with terms with the same dates sorted alphabetically. Which makes sense.

But now, when I go to a term pull-down menu, that order is reversed, putting my active terms at the bottom of the list:

I see three key improvements to be made in the presentation of terms:

1. Let's be consistent and use the same order in every listing. Doesn't matter what order -- but it should be the same. I don't have the bandwidth to re-figure this out every time I look at it.
2. Let's make sure the active terms are most readily available. This probably means that they should stay at the top of the Terms page and move to the top of the drop-down menu.
3. Let's mark active terms so that they're more readily apparent. For example (as you can see below), I use some CSS to highlight active courses in user details -- that visual cue for active terms would be great. And in the drop-down, there could be a divider between the active terms (top of the menu, ideally) and the inactive terms (bottom of the menu, ideally).

(As an aside… what on earth order are courses listed in? I mean… jeez. Also, obviously, I fiddled with the CSS of the div that holds the course listing so it autosizes to include everything, rather than just display 3 or 4 courses.)

[SHEBENE]

Deactivated user​ did the admin UI updates gain traction? I remember being a part of that process but it's dropped off the radar unless bits of it were added to various regular product updates. If it's moving forward, did this issue of term sorting get put in there?

Thanks for any information you have on this. New terms added for next year. My list is looooonnnngggg! (and in no apparent order)

[allison]

SHEBENE​: Yes, it has gained traction! It's not next on the list to build but not too far down either. In other words, there's hope! As soon as I have designs I will post them to this thread for everyone to review.

[jacob_standish]

Another area where sorting terms would be helpful would be with the Analytics.

We are a large K-12 district and in our first school year alone we have over 600 terms provisioned from our SIS (PowerSchool). Each school can have up to 8 terms.   As a school goes to report on their school's activity they have to scroll through a list of over 600 terms that doesn't even sort alphabetically or group each school's terms.    

I cringe each time I'm asked by a school how can they see data on their school's activity...

[SHEBENE]

That does look painful.

Sympathy

[John_Lowe]

Indeed!  Sorting alpha-numeric based on name would be an excellent method if there are no start dates or have identical start dates.  We don't use any term dates, but instead set dates at the course level.  So all of our terms are "whenever to whenever" ,and of course, all of our terms are just a jumbled mess with no sorting rhyme or reason in the terms list and all the drop-downs like this one for analytics or even the course filter.

[mbuonato]

With 8 building all using different Terms our list is also getting very messy. A favorites selector (similar to the favorites in courses to display on the dashboard) would be fantastic. At the very least an alpha-numeric based sort would greatly enhance this area.

[Renee_Carney]

  Idea is currently in Product Radar Learn more about this stage...

[Renee_Carney]

Greetings, all!

This idea got rather large, so it is going to be difficult to track progress, but we'll do our best!

The Canvas Production Release Notes (2016-12-10) ​begins to address some of the drop down list orders.  is a related idea that has been marked complete per that release!

[SHEBENE]

This is an excellent start! It works well for the course searching/filtering. Next up for this feature is the account admin terms view then... the idea of archiving terms! <---- that would be amazing and is hopefully its own feature request (going to look right after this). I think the potential to mark a term for cold storage and taking the contained courses out of course lists unless they are "thawed" would be HUGE.

[SHEBENE]

Yep there's a request to archive courses, I added a comment about term consideration here: " modifiedtitle="true" title="Course Archive Process Hopefully it won't have to be its own feature request since the mechanics will likely be the same, just the UI to control the process would be different.