[Announcements] Announcement Area ReDesign

[cms_hickss]

Right now both Global Announcements and Course Announcements become easily cluttered. It would be beneficial, especially where Global Announcements are concerned, if we had a way to archive or keep announcements sorted. Three areas: Posted/Live, Pending, Archived.

I would like to see an "Archive" area for announcements, well, everywhere:

• For Students who have seen the announcement but don't want to delete it in case they need to refer back to it later.
• For Teachers who copy courses forward and might want to re-use (the content of) an announcement but do not want them listed/seen by the students in the course.
• For Admins who want to clean up the Campus-wide Announcement Area but do not want to delete the announcements that have been posted. [Especially as the Announcements are now part of the university communication and need to be kept for 5 years. Our current Global Announcements area has about 30 "old" announcements cluttering the page.]

Posted/Live

This would be the area where announcements that are within their open and end dates would be. Once the end date has passed it could move to Archive.

Pending

It would be helpful on all announcements to see a "Pending" label for those that have been created but not actually sent/posted (globally or in a course). It would be nice if these could also be editable.

Finally, in the Global Announcements area, it would be nice if the announcements could be collapsed and just show the title and the open and close date. Currently, the entire announcement, for each announcement posted or set to post, appears on the page. This makes for one very long page.

Additional item added on July 205, 2019: Add ability to sort Global Announcements by creation date or posting date. Date sort for both options should be ascending and descending.

[valarie_a_wittm]

At a minimum, I would also like to see on the Announcements page, which announcements have been marked for later release. When copying a course to another semester, the announcement dates update, but are not always pertinent (spring break and faculty workshop days always throw a monkey wrench into the mix) and in order to see those dates, I have to open the announcement.

[u0488603]

I wish that I can sort announcements and change the attributes of multiple announcements at the same time (mass adjustments of announcements). 

[meichin]

Oh dear! I see that Canvas has archived this idea. We were hoping to get some traction on this as we have soon found this to be an administrative issue.

We have just transitioned to Canvas - 50% last fall, and 100% on board this spring. We can't delete our global announcements - they need to be kept as a record of what we have posted. But already have 33 announcements we have to scroll down to find the latest one. 

AT THE VERY LEAST (I know, I'm screaming, but only so that someone will hear me) can they be listed in reverse order? From latest to earliest by date? At some point in the near future we will be scrolling for a day to get to our latest one - if we need to make a quick edit - which we often do. That seems like a long time. 

What we really would like to see is the "Sorting Global Announcements by Live, Pending, and Past"  idea brought back up to the front. And Allison, who apparently is no longer with Canvas, said indeed it is "a good idea but something we'll need to save for future enhancements." Can today please be the future now?  _  It's Friday - I'm a little punchy.

@Renee Carney

@Scott Bickley

[Stef_retired]

 @meichin , the idea is not archived: at this writing, it's open for voting and in Product Radar status, and if you're logged in and haven't already voted it up, you should see active Vote Up | Vote Down buttons. Please don't be thrown off by the date header, which signifies the initial window in which the idea was put before the Community for consideration.

[meichin]

Thanks - I voted up - but the reason I thought it was archived was because of this post a few up from mine.  

 @allison  Mar 22, 2016 6:38 PM

We've decided to focus our recent improvements to Global Announcements around editing (recently released to beta) and publishing to sub-accounts (currently in progress). Sorting Global Announcements by Live, Pending, and Past is a good idea but something we'll need to save for future enhancements. Going to archive this idea for now.

Is the idea of sorting by live, pending, and past in the mix for development then?

[Stef_retired]

 @meichin ‌, this idea is in Product Radar status. When we redesigned and relaunched Canvas Studio in March 2017, this was one of the ideas that was given new life (hence the old date header and comment). The Community Team reviews ideas on a regular basis, and we post updates as they become available. You can read more about the processes at What is the feature development process for Canvas?‌ and How does the feature idea process work?‌

[meichin]

Oh  - I see!  Canvas Studio relaunch was before our time. That makes sense now. I'll keep that in mind when I see dates older than March 2017. I appreciate the clarification!

[travis_day]

The Announcements functionality seems primitive compared to other platforms (such as Sakai).  Being able to view announcement post dates (especially delayed/scheduled post dates) and being able to sort by these post dates would be extremely helpful.  This lack of functionality is one of the reasons I stopped using Canvas several years ago.  I have recently given Canvas another try, but am very surprised that the Announcements area still has not been improved in all these years, after so many requests from users, dating back more than 5 years.

Is there any chance that Canvas designers will improve the functionality and usability of Announcements? 

[RobDitto]

 @travis_day ‌, I agree, there's been very little change -- although https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/1533-tailor-announcements-to-specific-sections-or-groups?sr=se... is in development and will be very welcome when it arrives.  It seems to me that Canvas responses to this specific feature idea have focused primarily on redesigning Global Announcements in particular.

In my opinion as an institutional administrator, one way to help let Canvas Product Team know about interest in improving Course Announcements is for as many people as possible to vote and/or comment on these Course Announcement ideas which are currently open for voting, and which relate to your suggestions:

• https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/9333-start-and-end-dates-for-announcements 
• https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/1102-publish-and-unpublish-announcements (already in https://community.canvaslms.com/community/ideas/blog/2016/10/27/new-ideation-stage-product-radar?sr=...‌)
• https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/9949-confirm-send-for-announcments 
• https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/10472-sort-announcements 

[Renee_Carney]

cms_hickss‌ and others, please take a look at the Canvas Beta Release Notes (2018-02-26), specifically the Course Page Design Updates section.  These updates are specific to course announcements and do not change the admin announcements space.