[Notifications] Enable/Disable Notifications for Select Courses and Sub-accounts at Admin Level

[christopher_ma5]

Currently, notifications are controlled at the user level and defaulted to on. For some of our programs (sub-accounts) in Canvas, the notifications cause more problems and confusion among our students than help. I would like to suggest that all notifications can be disabled/enabled at the Admin level for select courses and sub-accounts.

[Stef_retired]

@christopher_ma5  As you've noted, notification preferences are attached to and managed by users. Canvas doesn't have currently have any settings that allow disabling notifications for a particular course or sub-account. We have several ideas requesting the ability to set defaults by role:

Default notification settings profiles by user rol...

Customize default settings for notifications / hid...

Would one of these, if implemented, address the problem statement in the idea description? If not, would you confirm that you are requesting a new set of functions at the admin level to manage notifications from specific courses and sub-accounts?

[christopher_ma5]

@Stef_retired Enabling/disabling notifications by role would be too limiting for our situation. Students and instructors are imported by our API in their default respective roles. I think we would require an extension of this potential feature, as we need the ability to control notifications for all students within a specific sub-account or course. We would still need students in other courses and sub-accounts to receive notifications as usual. 

[Stef_retired]

Thanks for the quick reply, @christopher_ma5 . We've moved the conversation forward for broader discussion.

[MichaelBould]

I was looking for something similar, we have some dedicated Sub-Accounts for all staff training, it would be useful to turn notifications off for these sub-accounts, but allow people in there to get notifications from other Sub-accounts.

[j-vanwagner]

Problem statement:

We have been creating training courses for students and faculty. However, we do not want to always blast students when we enroll them in courses. Can it be considered to enable a function for at least admins to go in and disable course notifications (at the course level - by each course)? It would be a nice option to be able to select in the permissions area in the event an institution does not want this to be allowed for instructors without further consultation. However, this option should be able to be turned on and off at a course level and not just at an individual level.

Proposed solution:

Create an additional setting in notifications to completely turn off. Then, add that option in the feature options section of a course where it can be turned on/off at the permission of the admin or faculty. The why is to minimize the amount of notifications coming from Canvas and thus defaulting it to spam. Removing notifications for classes that are "optional" and it can be communicated in one mass email that they have an invitation. For example, we have created a cybersecurity course. With that, we do not want to blast students when we enroll them since it is an optional course. However, the one we created for faculty and staff is mandatory and we would like the ability to send the notification on top of the email communications.

User role(s):

admin,instructor