Custom Role Name on "View All or Customize" screen

[Chris_Hofer]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

  Idea will be open for vote May 5th, 2015 - August 5th, 2015  Learn more about voting...

In our Administrative Pages of Canvas, we created a custom role called "Viewer" which is based on the "Teacher" Base Type.  This "Viewer" custom role allows us to enroll our faculty in "Master Term" courses to view curriculum but not make changes to it.  Also, they can still import content from this term into their own sections.  However, if you take a look at the example screen shot, the "View All or Customize" screen just indicates that an instructor is "Enrolled as a teacher"...even though when we invited the instructor to a course, we chose our "Viewer" custom role.

On this "View All or Customize" screen, it would be helpful if it actually said "Enrolled as a Viewer" (or whatever custom name you created) instead.  This would reflect the kind of access that the instructor truly has to that course.  Currently, our faculty would have to click on each course to determine if he/she has the ability to edit content.

Also, if it doesn't already, the e-mail invite that gets sent to the instructor should show the name of the custom role that the person has been given for a course.

Comments from Instructure

This change was fixed in our April 1 release. The engineering ticket was noted as a bug fix but did not include any support cases. Release notes indicate fixed bugs for behaviors that have affected a lot of our customers, and in this case, we couldn’t fully note the effect. We’ve learned a few things about our engineering tickets since then and have been trying to err on the side of noting any fix that may have a notable implication, and we apologize for inadvertently neglecting this change. We are glad that you are now able to view your custom roles!

[Renee_Carney]

There are many of us at Instructure that receive the updates as comments are added.  We also keep track of every single idea that was officially addressed by a product manager!  Some ideas do sit longer than others, but we are paying attention!  Promise!

[Renee_Carney]

 @sedmans ​ (and others)

Sorry for the delay in response.  It took me a little while to chase down and update.

Cosme had great intentions in September of 2015, however, the project he explored was never allocated for.  As you've spent time in the Feature Ideas, you've probably become very aware that our product team would love to build every awesome idea, however, there is a balancing act of priority and allocation when it comes to budgeting.

I do know that this idea will most likely not be developed in the near future.

We did make one role identification adjustment recently.  You can find it in the Canvas Production Release Notes (2016-08-06)

     More specifically

     Reports​

     Enrollments Provisioning Report Base Role Type

     Account-level features are not available in Free-for-Teacher accounts.

     In the Provisioning report, the Enrollments CSV includes a column for the base role type. This column helps admins view      the base role inherited by any custom enrollment role. Base roles include student, teacher, TA, observer, and designer.

[sedmans]

Hi Renee,

I have to admit that it is somewhat disappointing to hear that this request will not be reconsidered again, is there option for it to be raised again for voting, as community priorities may have changed over the past 12 months?

In any case many thanks for taking the time to investigate and respond

Thanks

Steve

[Renee_Carney]

  Idea is currently in Product Radar Learn more about this stage...

[Chris_Hofer]

Thank you for the update,  @Renee_Carney ​!  happypandadance​

[marthazumack]

This issue with the custom roles is still causing concern amongst our staff, as well as our students, who are confused about who to contact when using the Canvas messaging system. Our tutors use the TA role and this causes further concern to parents who fear that our faculty are not fully qualified! Can you give an update on plans to fix this, Renee?

[vrs07nl]

i agree - two years is a long time to wait for a fix on something as essential as this 

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi  @Renee_Carney ‌...

I'm not exactly sure when this was changed, but I *think* this has now been implemented in "Production".  I confirmed this with a co-worker and also masqueraded as a couple other instructors, and they are able to see our custom "Viewer" role on the Courses >> All Courses page on Canvas.  :smileylaugh:

[Renee_Carney]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas 

This change was fixed in our April 1 release. The engineering ticket was noted as a bug fix but did not include any support cases. Release notes indicate fixed bugs for behaviors that have affected a lot of our customers, and in this case, we couldn’t fully note the effect. We’ve learned a few things about our engineering tickets since then and have been trying to err on the side of noting any fix that may have a notable implication, and we apologize for inadvertently neglecting this change. We are glad that you are now able to view your custom roles!

[ku60530]

I'm late to the conversation on this one, but I believe this problem is not fixed consistently throughout the system. If you look at a user's profile within a module, it shows the role they are based on, not their actual role. While a handful of system administrators will understand what this means, it's confusing for everyone else. 

Thanks,

Debbie