Better Feedback on Broken Links

[ralmond]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

Right now, when students find broken links in a course, they are given the option to report a broken link.

However, the notification does not contain information about either (a) the page the student was viewing when they found the broken link or (b) the link they tried to assess.

I would propose that the report broken link feature should:

a) Contain information about the last page the student viewed before viewing the broken link.

b) If possible, contain the actual broken link.

Comments from Instructure

For more information, please read through the https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-16250-canvas-release-notes-2019-03-30 .

[RobDitto]

Voted! Fantastic idea,  @ralmond  At one time the cases routed to Canvas admins about broken links were more useful than they are now (with the HTTP_REFERER URL giving the information of the containing page, rather than the attempted route's error handler as it is now).

Users interested in this who haven't seen https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/5458-canvas-error-report-send-broken-link-errors-to-instructor might want to consider that idea as well.

And, most of all, why not improve Canvas to reduce the footprint of this common problem? As things stand, it's too easy for instructors and TAs to cause broken links. Some of the best existing ideas about that, in my opinion, are:

• https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/5443-drag-and-drop-files-into-course-modules-and-assignment-ed...‌
• https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/11517-update-existing-file-option 
• https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/11246-revising-documents-directly-in-canvas 
• https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/2439-indicate-where-files-are-linked-within-a-course" modified... (notwithstanding the extremely useful validate links feature)

Implementing these together would bring Canvas into parity with major competitors on this aspect of course content management. And I see that it's time to resubmit an idea about warnings for deleting linked course files.

[Renee_Carney]

 @ralmond  Thank You  for submitting this idea, as well as,  @RobDitto  Thank You  for your contributions. Your investment in this idea helped refine a feature which is now part of Canvas!