+1 for this Idea. Frankly, I'm amazed that a fairly simple and straightforward idea, clearly in demand by many in the Canvas Community (142 votes!), is so readily dismissed.
And, as was pointed out, Peyton's response seems to have completely misunderstood the request. Even using an external calendar (Google, Outlook, etc.), there is still no way to pull that calendar IN to Canvas.
Please review the initial request and comments, and reconsider!
I hope this is still on the radar of the Canvas programmers, and if not, I would like to know how to re-open this. It seems this is a tool that would be valuable to many Canvas institutions and users. We have received multiple requests at our institution alone, and having the ability to import a calendar to Canvas or even to set global dates would benefit us greatly.
It would be very beneficial to be able to somehow create calendar events at the account and sub account levels that would show upon all users' calendars that are a part of those accounts/sub accounts. These would be common events for everyone such as beginning and end of semesters and grading periods, school holidays, conferences, board meetings, sporting events, etc.
These universal calendar events should not be added to each course, otherwise they would show up on the calendar for every course where the user participates. This would place many repeated events on the calendar unnecessarily. Instead, I see this being an option in the box where users can filter the courses they see on their calendar. Maybe at the top of the list under the user's personal calendar, have an option for Universal Calendars. When this option is selected, Universal events for all accounts/sub accounts for that user will show on the calendar. Universal events could then be easily turned on and off in the calendar view without affecting other course calendars.
This could save a great deal of time for teachers and admins who are adding common district/building/university events for all of their courses.
To all the intrepid admins in this discussion: I've never tried this, but I wonder if anyone has used the REST API solution described by andersonj at InstructureCon 2013 to populate all published courses with a global event: Adventures with the Canvas REST API (YouTube, 29:14--the part about putting an event on all published courses is at around the 16-minute mark)? Success? Challenges?
