Observer roles notifications

[Eric_Roussel]

  This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

Can we enable the 'notifications' for oberservers. Currently these are very limited. Observers will get 'annoucements' notifications but not 'course content' or 'file' etc... This makes it very difficult to manage expectations when they are asked to set their notifications and then it doesn't apply to them.

  Comments from Instructure

For more information, please read through the Notifications section of the Canvas Production Release Notes (2016-04-23)

[biray]

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[joseph_allen]

Sorry, maybe I'm missing something, but why is this a feature request?  This is a bug that should be fixed asap.  If an observer goes into Canvas, sets their notifications, and then doesn't receive anything even though the event triggers have occurred, that is a bug, not a new feature.  If this is just how Canvas works, then the documentation needs to be updated stating that Observers will not receive notifications, and observers should not be given the opportunity to set notifications that will never come.  I know I'm late to this conversation, but it has just come up in my K12 school district and I feel like it is something that should have been disclosed during our implementation before we went out and told parents how to set notifications. Now there is some real urgency for our district to get this resolved as parents are coming to the realization that they are not getting notification's.  Has anything significantly changed since these posts?   @Eric_Roussel   @mlattke   @SethBattis 

[joseph_allen]

Seth, this is fantastic work and thank you for posting it.  Has anything changed since you conducted this test in June?

[joseph_allen]

Not good at all when you go out and train parents on how to set notifications and then those notifications never come.

[SethBattis]

 @joseph_allen ​, sorry to be slow responding. Nothing has changed that I know of. I do have  JIRA number (CNVS-23234), so I should get updates if anything moves.

[joseph_allen]

Seth, does this continue to be a problem for your district, and if so, how are you dealing with it?

[SethBattis]

Yes. It continues to be a problem -- not being able to get notifications means that I essentially have to re-present the information in some other format. It's a work in progress, but we've got an Advisor Dashboard LTI that lets advisors get some visibility into their advisees lives, even though they can't get notifications about "high interest" advisees (e.g. "I have an advisee who's pulling C's and D's, and I'd really like to get a notification every time they get a new grade.")

[mlattke]

 @SethBattis ​ and  @joseph_allen , check out the latest beta release notes!!  https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-6631#jive_content_id_Notifications 

Looks like there are some steps in the right direction for observer notifications!! Sweet!

[SethBattis]

Yay! Thanks for the heads up  @mlattke ​! I'm headed off to test it out later on today!

[joseph_allen]

Yes.  Its great news.  Thanks.