Parents: toggle view between children

[petern]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

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In the calendar I'd like to see a way to toggle the view from one child to another.  Vital for parents, teaching assistants and other observers.  Example:

This is not a new idea and has been requested before.  Thanks to everyone involved in the following pages:

https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/2512-parental-observation-in-canvas-complicated-with-three-chi... 

Parents Access to Canvas 

https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/8391-reorganise-observer-dashboard-to-view-student-courses-mor... 

[KristinL]

 @peaceinchaos ‌ ~ Unfortunately, this is an idea that is open for voting, not an already-existing feature for Canvas. I have offered some suggestions within conversations here. I hope these ideas are helpful in the meantime.

[carlafiorella92]

When researching a toggle option the guide says to use the Settings button on the app and my kids names will appear and I can toggle from there.  But NO - when I press Settings a list of all my kids' classes just shows up.  My kids names are not listed anywhere on this app or on a desk top.  This issue has been discussed in at least one more Find Answers discussion for a while.  Is there a solution coming soon?

[KristinL]

Hi  @carlafiorella92   and Welcome to the Canvas Community! 

The Observer role is awesome, but it isn't without its complexities. Please see some tips I've written for Observers of all kinds in A Letter To Canvas Observers‌. I hope it adds some clarity to what you can and cannot do with the Observer role.

You say "on the app", so I assume that you are referring to Canvas Parent‌. If you have linked your students to your Observer account (https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-10915-4144237751?sr=search&searchId=7e97c46f-b51c-40ff-989b...), you should be able to easily switch between your students on the app.

Right now, this feature idea for toggling between students is for the desktop/browser version of Canvas. Right now, this idea is in the very preliminary stages, so there is not a solution at the moment, nor is there anything on an official timeline. (You can read about the voting process here:https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-2109-how-does-the-voting-process-work-for-feature-ideas?sr=...‌)

[peaceinchaos]

I have the parent app, and it will not allow me to toggle between children. Matter of fact, I am the only name listed. When I try to put on the + and add a child, and then click students, it gives me some error message that it can't allow me to see the next page. I am so frustrated with this app!

Dacia

[KristinL]

I'm really sorry to hear that you're frustrated. There is a chance that your district has not enabled the app for their observer accounts. Before troubleshooting further, I would contact your district's technology department and Canvas administrator to see if they've made Canvas Parent available for families.

[jennmcgowan]

It looks like this has been untouched for the last year, but I am new to canvas and looking for a solution. My hope was that in changing the nickname I could reorganize the dashboard. However, their doesn't seem to be an option to "sort by nickname". Hoping this would be an easy temp solution while you work on the big issue.

I did use the solution shared here to color code each child, which helps somewhat on the calendar, though having a way to turn each on/off would be amazing. 

[katherine_tatum]

Sad that this post is from so long ago! When will the changes be made? My students' parents would love this!

[kimberly_ricks]

Would love to see this implemented ASAP.  I am also disappointed that this post is from so long ago.  It would be a great improvement for all parents that have multiple kids.  Even having two kids in middle school at the same time I was never able to see all of their classes on the calendar and it was difficult to switch from one child to the next and make sure all of their classes were selected.  

Is there any update from Canvas?

[bkibbey]

[I'm using the web client on a laptop]

It is hard to believe this basic fundamental feature is still not available here at the end of 2019.

I do see a student selection dropdown now in Calendar, but no selection dropdown in Dashboard or Courses where it is needed just as much.  Preferably, you would just add a filter in the main navigation somehow to show "All Data" "Student A" "Student B" "Student C" etc.  not a dropdown on each page, but I'd take anything for this now, INCLUDING JUST SORTING BY STUDENT FIRST.  

My general reaction as a parent is... the web client is 80% right and needs a few tweaks like this one, the Android client is 33% right and needs a lot of work... I know you want to put your development dollars to work smartly, but leaving simple things like this undone for years leaves a bad taste.  

Please push this up your priority list, minor implementation cost, huge productivity gain for parents/observers of more than 1 student.

[petern]

Hi anyone who's interested in a temporary solution. Some students I teach came up with a great solution to this here..

canvas/script.js at master · kingalfred/canvas · GitHub 

You can add that to your javascript in the global theme.

Points to note

1) All observers will have a drop down appear in the calendar view. Great for parents and teaching assistants.

2) Other users may also have a drop down (feel free to fix this canvas)

3) As the code relies on being able to display multiple calendars you should double check how many courses you would expecta parent to be able to view at the same time. Canvas by default will only show a maximum of 10, so as some students do more than 10 subjects and are enrolled in more than 10 courses, I had to ask my customer success manager to increase this.

4) It's worth knowing some JS first. There are some other functions you may wish to remove.

5) My students came up with a handy bit of JS to change the color of the favicon when in beta or test environment. This proved to be very useful when testing. Canvas... Simple but useful feature please.