[SIS] Add the ability to Sync/Unsync items by Due Date

[JeffCampbell]

Problem statement:

Right now, the ability to Sync and Unsync assignments is done one by one. While this is beneficial in many ways, it does create a time sink around the end of a grading period/quarter. Every time we start a new grading period, the sync with Powerschool stops sending grades. When looking at the Sync Log, it gives in error that indicates that grades from a prior grading period are being sent. I suspect the sync starts at the top of the list, so as soon as it runs into assignments from the prior Grading Period, it stops the sync entirely. When every assignment from the prior grading period are manually unsynced, the error disappears and grades are then properly sent to Powerschool. Past discussions about only syncing by grading period have indicated that there is not an easy way to query by grading period in the API: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Allow-Grade-Sync-by-Grading-Period/idi-p/42642...

Proposed solution:

My thought was to create an option on the Sync page, on the Utilities tab. The option would give users the ability to set a date or date range, then either Sync or Unsync every graded item with a due date that falls within that range (a simple checkbox for Sync or Unsync). Since the due date is set on the Canvas side, this gets around the "Sync by Grading Period" issue mentioned in a prior post. This would also create a less time consuming way to unsync a bunch of assignments so that the Sync to PowerSchool does not provide the error mentioned above.

User role(s):

instructor

[Hildi_Pardo]

We have Synergy and I'm not sure I'm understanding the error exactly. But I post an Announcement at the start of the quarter with this info:

How can I avoid seeing old assignments when syncing grades to Synergy?

When synching grades from Canvas to Synergy, you may see assignments from previous quarters. In this 1 minute video, (I removed the link for this response) I demo how you can view all Assignments for each Quarter on one screen, and unsync them from the grade passback process. This may even help your syncs to be quicker, as well 🙂

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In the video I direct them to the Assignments page, change filter to the previous quarter, then easily click the little icon to unsync assignments -- all on one page (don't have to enter each assignment.

Hopefully this is helpful in some way 🙂

[JeffCampbell]

@Hildi_Pardo Sorry. The old Ideas threads were locked between you posting your comment and me seeing it. What you describe for hitting the sync and unsync button that is on the Assignments List is an option (and is what I do too), but that still requires hitting that option for every single assignment individually. I usually do not have a ton of assignments in a quarter, but our Math teachers do. This idea came from helping one of them with an error I described in my post. They easily have 30+ assignments in a quarter. My idea is to create an option to sync or unsync an entire chunk of assignments based on their due dates, with just a single button press.