[Studio] Ability to sort/search video list when trying to move a video to a Collection

[kona]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas Studio

---

When trying to "move" a Studio video into a collection, there is no way to sort or search the list that comes up. The list contains every course the person is in and all of their collections. The issue is that for some people, this list is VERY long and the inability to sort or search makes it basically unusable. This means no way to sort videos into collections.

As a user case, my college has been using Studio (aka Arc) since early 2018. Because of this, it’s not unreasonable to think that if each instructor teaches 10+ courses a year (which would be a minimum for a lot of faculty) and you multiply it by 4 years that the majority of my faculty would have a list of courses alone that would be 40+ long and this doesn't include all of their collections that would also be included in the list. 

For me personally, as an Admin (and someone who teaches), my list is crazy long and it takes forever to search through in order to try and find and organize a video that isn't in a collection. 

It would be AMAZING and wonderful if Studio users were able to sort and/or search through the list that populates when users try to move an unsorted Studio video into a collection. 

[mstephen3]

I am also struggling with this drop-down menu. It went from 6 items to over 70 and I don't really understand why the classes need to be in the collections drop down menu at all. Is anyone using them in this way?

[ejackson]

This feature would be EXTREMELY helpful. As a Canvas Admin, I help a lot of instructors with their Canvas courses, including Studio. It gets very frustrating when we have to scroll and scroll and there is no way of searching for what we are looking for. VERY user-UNfriendly!

[Hildi_Pardo]

We've just started using Studio, and would love that this NOT become a problem for our teachers.  As an Admin, I would be looking at the same problem Kona and EJackson describe -- so I support this idea!

[jarryb]

Agreed. The ability to sort/search would not just be helpful but is essential for many of our users.

[James]

@kona 

I've been using Studio almost as long as you have, so I'm not sure what you mean by there is no way to search. There is a search button at the top that will give you all the videos that match the search string.

My problem with the search is that it returns every time the video is used. It finds the video that is in my library as well as my FA22, SP22, FA21, SP21, FA20 courses where it is used. It seems to be in reverse ID order, so my library, which is the one that I want to move, is last in the list (it has no course information on it).

You are correct about getting the full list of every course I've ever, even as an admin, looked at. And the search doesn't honor the collection that you're in (if you're in a collection, the search doesn't return only those items in the collection). This means that if you have lots of videos in a collection, there's a lot of scrolling and loading more to get the full set.

I am pretty sure that I wrote some code using the Studio API to move files. It's way too many clicks for me to do it manually so it was a prime candidate. I gave it strings like "Math 121" or "Linear Programming" and then ran the program to move all of the files in one collection (typically my library) that had a title that matched that would get moved to another collection that I had created.

The problem is that it has no user interface, it's all command line code. But we might be able to make it work if there were a lot of videos to move around and there was a good naming scheme.

I don't have it set up to do this, but there are tags available through the API, so you could set it up (more programming required) to go through and load the tags and then use them to move to the appropriate collection. This would only be if there wasn't a pattern in the title.

Update: About 2 minutes after I posted this, you walked in and showed me what list you were talking about. You're talking about the dropdown list of destination collections once you select on the Move To. Ignore what I said about the ability to search. I didn't get that from your original post. The other stuff about using the API still applies.

[kona]

Hi, @James! What I mean is that when trying to "move" a Studio video into a collection, there is no way to sort or search the list that comes up. Emphasis on the -- "move" a Studio video into a collection -- part of that sentence. I can see where that might not be clear in my original post, so here's a quick video illustrating what I'm talking about.

[James]

@kona 

I cannot see your video, but I see what you're talking about.

The dialog box that pops up isn't a normal select list where you can start typing and it will jump to that item. In fact, the list is destroyed (removed from the webpage) if you click outside the browser tab (say to explore it with the Developer Tools).

By adding a mutation observer, I was able to track down that it is created using the SimpleSelect from InstUI. The documentation for that method says that the behavior is like an HTML select except that it is simpler and less configurable and does not support autocomplete.

On the other hand, they have a Select interface available in InstUI that does support autocomplete and allows for people to start typing to match text.

The list does appear to be alphabetical, though. How would you want to sort it? I don't think there is information easily available on last used, but it would be nice to have it remember the last collection used.

[kona]

I believe the video needs to be approved before it's visible.

For how would I like it to be sorted, it would be nice if created (personal) collections could be listed first and in alphabetical order. Yet, I could also see the value and might want it listed in order of when my personal collections were created. If you were doing a Canvancement (hint, hint), then I'd love the option of which to sort first, personal vs. course collection. And then, an option of whether that sort was done by date created or alphabetically. 

[jfountain]

Agree, we need more structure to the organization within Studio tools, such as this.  We have to keep courses active for 4-5 years, with likely 50+ videos per course and 10+ instructors in each course (higher-ed, team-taught).  We just started using Studio, but we will need more organization and filtering, archiving, etc., by next spring.