Direct message a person without having to go to the Inbox

[00000975108]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

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

It would be very useful and time-saving to have a "new message" shortcut either next to a person's name in the People menu of a course, or in the person's profile.

The way it is now, it takes me a long time to go to Inbox, compose a message, find the desired class in a very long list of classes, then find the desired person, etc.

Thank you for the consideration.

  Comments from Instructure

For more information, please read through the Canvas Production Release Notes (2017-01-28) 

[biray]

Are you hoping to do something in the People tab that is similar to the email icon seen on the Student Interactions Report under Grades? How do I view the Student Interactions Report?​

[00000975108]

Is the "Student Interactions Report" available to everyone on Camino, or just to teachers?  The help link that you provided seems to be referring only to teachers' menus, and more specifically a menu called "Courses I'm teaching".  Since I'm not a teacher, I do not have any of those features. 

Just to clarify, my suggestion is intended for everyone, not just teachers.

An email icon, as you suggested, would work great.

More specifically, when I go to a course, and then click on the People menu, I see a list of names, course section, and 'role' for each name.  I suggest adding an email icon, or some kind of "send message" shortcut, next to each person's name in that list. 

[nbrown2]

This used to be available through people > user profile page, but disappeared a couple of years ago for teachers. I seem to be able to click the "speech bubble" icon as a contact method for users as an admin, but teachers do not have that option.

[kroeninm]

There is a link on the Course Analytics page as well, two clicks.  Click on Course Analytics, click on the Student name, and then click the Mail icon.  Adding the same mail icon to the People page would be nice. 

- Melanie

[jklos]

I would also like to see more ways to easily direct message a student throughout the gradebook section of a course. For example, I'll be looking through the assignment submissions, and looking through the gradebook, and I'm not able to easily message a student.  This could be from the class gradebook, or the individual student gradebook.

[00000975108]

Hi Melanie,

You are correct about the Course Analytics option, but that one is also only available to instructors.  I think everyone should be able to contact everyone more easily than going through Inbox... 

[jjohnson]

This should also be true from the gradebook. It would be much easier to be able to right click on a score or the person's name in the gradebook and write a message.

[kmeeusen]

Svetoslav:

When you go to People and click on a student's name, on the right side menu is a choice to message that student. Is this what you are looking for?

Kelley

[Renee_Carney]

00000975108​ Did you see  @kmeeusen ​reply above and is this suitable for a shortcut to direct message?​

[christopher_mcg]

There is still no easy way for Students to message either fellow students or their teachers in a course; from within the course.  The only current option for students to message an instructor is via the Help -> Ask Your Instructor a Question option.  That's not necessarily intuitive to find.  Also, what if the course has multiple instructors, but the student just wants to email one specific instructor?