[Import/Export] Undo Course Imports

[bmackenzie]

It seems that users should be able to undo or delete items they have imported into courses. On the Import Content page under the Current Jobs section, it would be very helpful to have an option to remove, delete, or undo each import individually. Currently if a mistake is made when importing to a course the only option seems to be to reset the entire course content. With users importing various resources from other courses and commons regularly, this solution would save a lot of time and heartache when such mistakes are made. To ask users to reset the entire course content, or to go through the entire course content and find every file, page, or assignment that may have been connected to that import and delete them individually seems like unfair punishment for an easily made mistake. It seems this would also possibly encourage more users to embrace the Canvas Community and use amazing resources like Commons, without fear of making such a mistake, or the time consuming steps of importing to a sandbox first then importing to the desired destination.

[dgatrell]

I build content for two similar courses and then sometimes share between them by importing selected content.  Today I accidentally imported the course instead of selecting the quiz I wanted.  I overwrote my assignments and quizzes because I had originally built some of them in the other course before transferring and modifying them for my Honors class.  This created a HUGE headache because the Honors work was more difficult and the directions and half the quiz were now gone...and students had already submitted assignments and taken the quiz.  Since quiz questions were now 'missing,' their scores changed and require me to rescore (a matching test) but the Gradebook program CANVAS feed into will not update point value, etc.  So now I'm forced to rebuild everything from scratch and make my students retake quizzes.  It's a complete waste of my time and their time for a simple mistake that should be easy to 'undo.'  

Please make it possible to UNDO an import, and/or consider adding an option to SELECT CONTENT from a CANVAS course in the drop down menu.  I know to click that box and I swear I did, but I somehow must have missed it.

Thanks.

[bw476]

Do we have any updates on this?

[michaelhenthorn]

I just did copied a course into my course instead of a Sandbox. Yikes. I messed up. can't believe there's not an undo function. 

[ewrye]

Agree with all comments. Just had a teacher who meant to only import a Quiz instead import an entire course - she contacted help to see if we could undo what she did - would be nice if there was an easy way to revert an entire course to a previous version (or at least a version within the last 2-3 days).

[chriscas]

This is my basic concern with this idea...  It could cause a lot of bad ripple effects if an import was undone, but some of the content was modified (or even still needed in the course, but the original source was no longer available to re-import from).

I'd suggest having some sort of short window of time to undo the import (maybe as short as a hour, or as long as a day).  Even with the short window, I think any imported content that had been modified after the import should be left alone.

[hjscm]

I import entire courses each semester and have been for several years now. I accidentally import the wrong course on occasion and would love to not have to bother an administrator to fix my errors. With an undo button, I could take care of it myself immediately and move on to other important work. It is easy to import the wrong things when you have so many old courses. (I have 10 per semester!) I do cross reference them, but still, errors are made...

[jlee9]

You can "Reset Course Content" which in fact undoes a course import.

[kwiles]

Sure that helps when you're originally setting up the course.. but when you're doing it mid semester to import one or two items from another course, you're in a lot of trouble when you accidentally imported a whole class. You certainly don't want to reset course content! It's also really annoying to reset the course content in the beginning if you've already done a lot of changes.

[timothy_maw]

I had not thought of that problem. I think a short time frame would be just fine as having to undo the import is usually something I need to do immediately.

[ayost]

Why this isn't already a feature is beyond me. I accidentally imported a course into my current course which have been running for 6 weeks now. A "reset course content" would wipe out anything already submitted or added by me in the course. I simply want to "undo" the import. The import screwed up all my settings so they no longer match the district settings. I don't know how to fix what just happened!!