When a Canvas course is deleted, restoring it is unnecessarily complex—especially for courses that were not managed by a SIS integration).
The current restoration process involves either:
- Running a special SIS_Import with the correct parameters and the overide gui flag enabled, or
- Manually locating the course's Canvas-assigned course ID by combing through large reports such as the Provisioning Report. This workflow is time-consuming, inefficient, and error-prone, particularly when dealing with thousands of archived or deleted courses.
Use Case Example: An old orientation course, ORIENT.OLD, was deleted. A year later, staff need to reference content from that course.
Currently, restoring the course requires either:
- Searching through the Provisioning Report to identify the Canvas course ID.
- Re-importing or referencing the course manually using an off-cycle SIS_Import. This results in unnecessary administrative overhead and delays.
Enhance the existing Restore Content admin tool by allowing administrators to search for deleted courses using any identifying attribute, such as:
- Course Name -SIS_ID
- Canvas course ID
- Canvas-generated course code This tool should index both active and deleted courses, enabling more intuitive restoration without requiring report exports or SIS-based workarounds.
Why This Solution Works:
- Reduces reliance on manual data extraction and external reports.
- Speeds up the recovery process for deleted courses.
- Ensures that non-SIS-managed content is still easily accessible and recoverable.
- Aligns with Canvas' commitment to user-centric admin tools and minimizes the potential for data loss due to inaccessible IDs.
