It would be nice if Canvas administrators had access to a user setting that would disable the users ability to post new inbox messages or respond to messages they receive.
It would be useful to have the option to disable the Inbox on a course-level, for any user with the "Teacher" role in a course to control. (As a toggle option in the Course - Level Settings.) That way, the Inbox feature could be turned off for individual classes, that do not want students to be able to access it.
This is exactly what we'd like to see here too! We have large courses where students are asked to write to a role-based account in the first instance if they need assistance; this is explained in their course materials and orientation but the Canvas Inbox isn't set up this way and we end up having students bulk emailing all teaching staff associated with a course and they either don't get responded to or get multiple responses, and the teaching staff don't know who has responded, if anyone. Being able to turn off the inbox for those courses would be fantastic!
I agree. I have two main issues: students ask about test questions and include the correct answer which then is available to the entire class and they send me messages that include personal information that they do not realize everyone can see. I would actually like to disable the Inbox since it also facilitates students not checking their campus email. It would be a more useful function if it just connected directly to campus email without making the comment available to the entire class.
It would be great if this could be restricted at that course level, rather than in permissions. If you have a course used for department information & not actual course work, it would be a nice feature to restrict students from sending messages (often accidental) to a the course.
To move a course to a sub-account, an admin can either edit course settings or perform a courses.csv SIS Import specifying the target "account_id" (sub-account SIS ID).
The question remains whether admins can prevent the use of class participants from initiating emails to the entire class, including excluding the admin from correspondence? These controls are possible on D2L, Blackboard/Moodle, TRACS, OnCourse and other course webs.
We need to deactivate messaging for individual students instead of doing it for the whole school. Some students are using the messaging in in appropriate ways. Can you add an individual deactivation option?