Auto Save in Rich Content Editor

[snugent]

This is badly needed. We have had several people lost content they were writing in discussion posts and it would be useful when creating pages as well. Even here in the community Jive has this feature and I love it. Canvas needs it too!!

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

For more information, please read through Canvas Release Notes (2020-03-21) 

[timothy_maw]

I can't remember how many times this happened to me as a student. It was really frustrating as I would have to start over several times. Now as an instructional designer, I have accidentally deleted information as I've built assignments and quizzes and had to start over. Luckily, I've gotten much more careful but I tend to save more often than I should have to. 

[woods437]

This would be extremely helpful. I've lost a few drafts because it doesn't save as I'm typing. It would help also because I wouldn't have to go back and forth from a word document.

[demarco_r01]

I can't tell you how many discussion replies I have lost this semester alone...and this is my first semester of using Canvas.  This is very frustrating and time-consuming to not have this basic feature.

[tobinje1]

Canvas, it makes no sense that the method by which you prioritize creating solutions to your product's core functions would be through a public up/down vote system. This is ludicrous. The auto-save function is a must-have. Why should institutions continue to use this product if students are being told to not use one of its most basic and necessary function (which they are by it not working as effectively and efficiently as it should)? Please, for the love of god, get auto-save into production as quickly as is humanly possible so people stop losing their work and potentially having their grades suffer for it. College is not cheap, so I'm sure many people would appreciate it if Canvas would stop making it needlessly more difficult. Come on. You know it's needed, so just get it done. Thanks. 

[awilliams]

Hey  @tobinje1 , I understand this is somethig you are passionate about. I wanted to let you know that Community feedback is a valuable part of the feature development process, but only a part of that process. There is a lot more to the prioritization that goes on and you can read more about that in https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-14905-75187841185 

[dholik]

Hi Jeff,

We had to do this with custom programming and couldn't wait any longer for the feature to be added as core code. We have too many students every month reporting that their discussion posts are missing or that they should write them in a MS Word document before posting.

We're still testing our custom code but we'll hopefully roll it out in the next month. What we had to do was add a save button that students will have to click to save a discussion post in progress without actually posting it. I'll attach a screen shot so you can see.

Thanks,

Dean

[tobinje1]

This is certainly better than being forced to use a different program. I appreciate the update. Thank you.

[lwhite3]

I just worked 4 hours creating a lesson page and while researching for content, I accidentally closed Chrome instead of the tab for my research site.  All was lost.  Then, I noticed that this comment was autosaved!  Please add autosave to Canvas.

[mwolfenstein]

I include this advice in my training course for teaching online, and then of course I completely failed to follow it and lost a fairly lengthy response post when our campus had a power outage!

[tobinje1]

Is there an update on this?