[Discussions] Allow teachers and students to get URL for specific posts

[Tasha_Biesinger]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas LMS

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Problem statement:

In the old discussions users were able to grab a URL to specific posts in a discussion board (see https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Question-Forum/How-do-I-link-to-a-discussion-post/m-p/1533...), but with the Discussion Redesign this is no longer possible. This prevents users from quickly referencing other users' posts in any post e.g., faculty from composing a summary post and linking to multiple specific posts within the discussion. The "Quote Reply" functionality does not satisfy this need because it is 1) limited to replies to posts and 2) only one post at a time.

Proposed solution:

Recreate the functionality from the old discussions where users could use the discussion search to locate a post, and allow users to right-click the "Go to Reply" link to get the URL for the specific post.

User role(s):

instructor,student,ta

[VPundir]

Problem statement:

The whole point of Announcements and Discussions is that there are replies (threaded) and discussions. Very often, there is occasion to refer to a specific thread/reply rather than the whole Discussion (or Announcement). Unfortunately, Canvas doesn't provide any mechanism to do direct internal link to a reply.

Proposed solution:

Please allow linking from within Canvas to specific replies. And in line with social media (FB, X, etc), link the reply date to the specific link to that reply, so that we can grab a direct link, which could be of the format: https://canvas.{DOMAIN}.ac.uk/courses/{COURSE_ID}/discussion_topics/{DISCUSSION_ID}#{REPLY_ID}

User role(s):

instructor

[KristinL]

  Comments from Instructure

This feature is available in Beta. For more information, please read through the Canvas Release Notes (2025-05-17) 

How do I access the Canvas beta environment as an instructor?

[Tasha_Biesinger]

This is great news!

[KristinL]

Comments from Instructure

For more information, please read through the Canvas Release Notes (2025-05-17)