[Inbox] Link Observers to Students for Messaging

[TampaNative]

When writing a message to a parent, Observer, it can be very difficult to know who their parent is exactly without having to first search through the People page. The People page does not allow us to Message Observers. It would be wonderful if when drafting messaging, and the Observers list was pulled down is said something such as

Tim Smith Observing Bobby Miller 

Observers do not always have the last names of our students and they sometimes are mixed families too. This would help tremendously so I know which Observer belongs to which Student. 

[MBlackwell_GCA]

Our district is currently using the script that was shared by a Canvas Community member, github link to updated script: https://github.com/sdjrice/msgobs.

We are super thankful for this implementation and thankful for the spirit of sharing with the Canvas Community at large. 

With that said, the script is integrated using the theme editor and additional customizations also using the JS or CSS files have caused some issues that required additional workarounds. It seems that most institutions NEED the ability to CC observers on Canvas communications and this should be native to the Canvas platform.

Now that there is the ability to include observers on communications when using the grade book feature to "Message Students Who" in the upcoming June 18th 2022 release, it seems that the ability to CC observers on inbox communications would be a thoughtful addition.

[audra_agnelly]

With the Inbox refactoring that rolled out to beta last week, I am seeing that the msgobs script is no longer working, the Include Observers and Remove Students buttons have disappeared. The response from Canvas was:

"Since the Include Observers button is custom code and not standard to Inbox, it unfortunately will be impacted with the refactoring. I apologize for that inconvenience and certainly understand your overall frustration. Uniform functionality is definitely a strategy discussion point in consideration by our senior leadership."

The refactored inbox is scheduled to move to production on October 15, so be prepared for your teachers to lose access if you have this script installed.

Here are the 2022-10-15 Release Notes and the Features Q&A: Canvas Release Notes (2022-10-15) where you can comment on this update.

[audra_agnelly]

@MBlackwell_GCA and @KristinL I reached out to Steven Rice and he will not be able to update his Add Observers script to work with the new refactored inbox. Districts using this will lose access to the functionality on 10/15. I've requested Canvas delay this feature feature until it has the same functionality as the gradebook messaging tool, but they were not receptive to that request. I encourage admins using this with their districts to comment on the 10-15 Release Q&A.