[Announcements] Publish and Unpublish Announcements

[dhulsey]

I love that Canvas can bring over announcements when I copy content from another Canvas course. This keeps me from copying and pasting announcements I make every semester.  To further develop this feature, it would be nice if Announcements were unpublished on import, meaning the instructor can see them but the students can't. With a "publish button on every announcement, instructors could release announcements quickly when they are needed without the tedious setting of a date and time on each announcement.

This feature would also bring announcements in line with other tools in Canvas that use publish and unpublish functionality and would help instructors who might unintentionally be releasing announcements to students from a past semester.

[nfisher]

We have a lot of instructors who use the same announcements each semester. However, importing them also brings the incorrect dates and information. Unless you assign a new release date, students are able to see the old announcement from the word "go". Being able to publish/unpublish would be so fantastic! Great idea.

[cholling]

Not only the points you mentioned, but it also puts a "U" rather than the original poster's profile initials (if they haven't chosen to use a photo). The only way I've found to change is to copy and paste the announcement text as a new announcement -- great time waster.

[nfisher]

YES! We are bothered by this also. The students always ask "is that a TA or someone?" As the instructor you have to copy the text and re-create the whole announcement just so your students recognize you!

Great Point Cynthia!

[terry_taylor]

Hope someone at Canvas pays attention to this multiyear request but based on previous experience I doubt it.

[gfoster]

I make announcement everyday of the semester with the daily agenda so I have roughly 75 announcements per semester times 2 because I teach two different classes. So basically my options are to delete all 75 and then copy and paste each of them one at a time from the previous course throughout the semester (moving back and forth between two different courses) or click on all 75 individually in the new course and set the delay date for each of them prior to publishing. This is very time consuming. I would think that  once the announcement are copied over from another course instead of having them all show up as published in the new course where students will see all 75 of them (not aligned with correct dates for the new semester) as soon as the course itself is published these copied announcements would be hidden from students but visible to the teacher so the teacher could modify them for the new semester and make them visible when needed throughout the semester. Hope this fix happens soon as I have been doing this for 3 years now. 

[jhart3]

It amazes me that this request has been ongoing since 2015, and yet, nothing has changed with the annoucement feature of having the option of 'publish/unpublish' and 'close date' features.  It's a simple, standard protocol for other LMS programs I've used....all have 'open and close' date windows.  I teach six sections in Canvas and the hassle of having to either delete announcements or advance the date well ahead of the preferred close date is a major frustration, waste of time, and if any are missed in changing, they will show up to students incorrectly.  I've mentioned this before that school administrators have both "publish/unpublish' and 'open/close date' features to use in their announcements.  Why can't Instructure get this done for the main group of people who use Canvas?  Based on so many instructor comments, it is an irratation that this basic feature is still not available after four years.  I wonder if anyone from Instructure reads these comments.

[aubertj]

I agree!

[marcia_woodard]

Ditto!!

Marcia Woodard

Senior Associate Faculty

English and Engineering Departments

20000 68th Ave. W, Lynnwood, WA 98036

<https://maps.google.com/?q=2000068thAve.W,Lynnwood,WA98036&entry=gmail&source=g>

| edcc.edu

marcia.woodard@email.edcc.edu <marcia.woodard@email.edcc.edu>

On Sun, Jan 6, 2019 at 8:51 PM aubertj@arc.losrios.edu <

[xfileluv]

I came here to find out how to unpublish announcements from last semester, but apparently that is not an option. I will be happy to manually publish each announcement when the time comes. But do I understand that when I imported last semester's course into the current shell messages were sent to each student? As in, 12 messages to each student?

[xfileluv]

Also, w/out the unpublish/hide option, do I now need to delete all of the announcements in the current shell?