[Roles] Make Custom Role Names visible in more parts of Canvas

[christine_mckeo]

Our university receives role names from our SIS, and we've created corresponding custom roles in Canvas. This gives members of a course an accurate idea of everyone's roles. For example, it's important to differentiate between "Faculty" and "Faculty Assistant," even though they are both based on the Teacher role.

There are many places in Canvas, however, where the 'base role' name is reflected, as opposed to the custom role name, which adds unnecessary confusion for users of the platform. This feature idea is to represent custom role names in all areas of Canvas. Below are a few areas where roles are displayed inconsistently.

Thanks for considering this feature idea! If there are other areas I've forgotten, please feel free to add them in the comments and I'll try to keep the idea up to date! 

1. The Inbox

Users in the inbox are grouped by base role, which is helpful if, say, a student wants to message all of the teachers in the class. Most users are not familiar, however, with the concept of base roles and it would be much more useful if users were categorized by their actual course role names. To provide an example, we have a "Teaching Staff" role that uses the Teacher role as the base role; if a student were looking to message a member of the Teaching Staff through the inbox, they may not know whether they should look for that person in "Teachers" or "Teaching Assistants." It would be more consistent to just call Teaching Staff "Teaching Staff."

2. Prior Enrollments

Once users are concluded, only their base roles are displayed in the Prior Enrollments page. This is a real bummer because it's not possible to keep an accurate record of actual course roles through the UI once a course is concluded.

3. Enrollment details

If you're on the People page in a Canvas course, you will see a user's custom role name. If you click into their enrollment details, however, the base role name will display instead. 

4. Course Settings > Sections

The base role name is also displayed when you view enrollments via Course Settings > Sections. The information available on this page should be consistent with information available on the People page. 

  Comments from Instructure

Some of the additional placements for custom role names were included in the Canvas Deploy Notes (2022-02-02) 

[KristinL]

  Comments from Instructure

Hi Everyone - Part of this request is available!

Please see the Canvas Deploy Notes (2022-02-02) for more information about Custom Roles Display Updates. 

• Account Level: User Details link
• Course Level: User Details link
• Course Level: Profiles (if enabled)
• Course Level: Course Sections

Because this Idea has not been completed in its entirety, the conversation will stay in the Open status. Please continue to follow this thread for additional updates! 

How do idea conversations work in the Instructure Community? 

[chriscas]

Problem statement:

When a custom course role has been created based on an observer, the People page does not show this custom role name like ti does for all other roles. This creates a lot of confusion for us, because we have a role called "waitlisted student", which is observer-based (for various good reasons), yet when anyone visits the people page, all they see for users enrolled with that role is "observing: nobody". This creates confusion for the teacher and the students, as "observing: nobody" does not make much sense to anyone other than a Canvas admin.

Proposed solution:

The people page should display the role name, especially if the user is not observing specific users. For example: "Christopher Casey Waitlisted Student" or "Christopher Casey Observer" instead of "Christopher Casey observing: nobody". If the user is observing somebody, have something like "Christopher Casey Observer (observing: Joe Smith)" would be a preferable format.

User role(s):

admin,instructor,student,ta,designer,observer