Users need to be able to customize notifications at the course level

As a user, I want to be able to keep frequent notifications enabled for courses that have high interaction, that I am more invested in, or I find important.  I want to be able to 'down-tune' or disable notifications for courses that have a lot of activity but not much interaction, courses that I am involved in as a staff member, or by my role in the institution involved in but not participating in so I do not receive notifications that I will end up ignoring and then also miss important notifications.

 

If the premise of Canvas Notifications is to keep me engaged in courses and informed about my courses, I need to be able to control that at a course level for it to be valuable to me and not just a 'firehose' of information.  If I cannot control it more granularity, I may turn all Notifications off and then miss something I actually did want to know about.

Note from the Community Team:https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/3663-notifications-by-course also requests this capability. We consider combined support for both ideas as part of our regular prioritization process.

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

For details, please read through the https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-18579-canvas-release-notes-2020-04-18 .

68 Comments
abobal
Community Novice

I see that this was an issue that was originally discussed in 2015. Wondering if there has been any progress in reworking notifications. Instructors would really like to customize at the course level. Thank you!

curtain
Community Participant
Author

Short answer is Instructure has said that it will require a fundamental refactoring of how courses and notifications work and is a big job that they have not been able to prioritize.

ejennison
Community Novice

I would like an option to get notified when someone replies directly to your discussion board post, or being able to subscribe to a specific thread within a discussion board. That way if someone asks you a question, you can follow up. 

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team

The Radar idea stage has been removed from the Feature Idea Process.  You can read more about why in the blog post Adaptation: Feature Idea Process Changes.

 

This change will only impact the stage sort of this idea and will not change how it is voted on or how it is considered during prioritization activities.  This change will streamline the list of ideas 'open for voting', making it easier for you to see the true top voted ideas in one sort, here.

ana_mataksiviou
Community Novice

Here's another vote for specifying notifications per course, or at the very least per role, please. Smiley Happy Our users have access to lots of Canvas courses (we're very sharing like that!), so could potentially get loads of notifications. Eeek!

ProfessorBeyrer
Community Coach
Community Coach

Still an idea in late 2018.  @kbink  Thank You  for starting the discussion that led me to this three-year-old idea: Misuse/misunderstanding of Grade Comments  

javier1
Community Novice

Ok so Canvas is a tool for online courses, which means that email notifications are THE MOST IMPORTANT TOOL to keep our students engaged and up-to-date with the courses they take. Hence, we MUST be able to decide WHAT these notifications include. In our case, students receive notifications including the full text of the posts in the discussion board, which at the end, makes it totally unneccessary for them to access the discussion board at all!!! And this is NOT what we want. Please allow us to decide what we want to include in email notifications. This is not a hard feature to develop, come on!

Chris_Hofer
Community Coach
Community Coach

Hi  @javier1 ...

This is not a hard feature to develop, come on!

Instructure has a document called What is the feature development process for Canvas? which details why some things that may not seem hard to develop actually can be more complex.  Please check out the paragraphs under "If my idea doesn’t align with a priority, is it still important?".  Thanks.

kbunch
Community Novice

Two threads where customers have been asking for this feature for three years.  If it's difficult to do, but the requests keep coming in -- in three years they haven't been able to find a way to do this or work toward a feature like this?  Come on Canvas -- do better!  

jeanraph
Community Novice

To add to this thread, it would be helpful if Notifications had more granularity, or the ability to email a summary of activities for each course. Or perhaps the ability to override certain notification settings for students, especially for announcements. At our institution, we have an instructor who posts major announcements (i.e. final examination information, upcoming due dates, etc.) and minor announcements (i.e. daily news articles). While the onus is on students, some of them forget to turn on notifications for announcements, and having this feature ensures the news reaches them.