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

[curtain]

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 .

[curtain]

Deactivated user​  This is disappointing to hear as most of our students and instructors are choosing to 'down-tune' their notifications since any one course might be so noisy that it downs out the benefit of the other notifications.  We were hoping this was something that would be on the short list based on the demand here.

Instead of making this setting at the course level are their not options to 'filter' the messages as they flow at the user level?   Each notification must have some indication/meta data that maps to an actual course.   If the user could define on the Notifications page that they want to create filters based on courses in their active course list and filter those in specific ways that may provide some better controls.  So say I have my Notifications set a certain way and then I have a list of courses and could define for each one to follow the notification settings, be 'turned off entirely' or maybe have some 'just give me the key items' daily summary.  Just brainstorming out loud.

Thanks for the update

[sara_munzinger]

Is this feature request now categorized as "not planned"?  Or will we be able to vote for it again in the future?

[Beth_Young]

Since this feature is currently not planned, I'm wondering if it's possible to filter notifications on the receiving end. In other words, for notifications that come to my email, are they varied enough that I can set an email filter that will sort them by course? I am not getting many notifications now or I would try it out. Has anyone else had any success with this?

(Perhaps this would be a good topic for a guide? If Canvas provided a guide on this topic, I would link to it so that students could filter their notifications, too.) (Maybe Canvas already provides such a guide.)

[John_Lowe]

Maybe I don't understand the voting process, but how did this get moved straight to Archived?

[kona]

 @John_Lowe ​, you may have missed it, but earlier today Deactivated user​ posted on this feature request that, "Making a user's notification preferences editable at the course level would provide users the flexibility they need to manage the volume of notifications they receive. After reviewing how this change would be implemented, it became clear that it would require a significant change to the architecture of notifications. Right now notifications are managed at the user level which control a user's experience throughout Canvas. Making this a setting at the course level is a large effort. This is a feature we hope to deliver in the future, but it is not something that we will be able to work on in the next six months."

[ted_coopman]

I would like to pile on and say this should be a priority for several reasons. The current system greatly reduces the overall utility of Canvas.

I have been encouraging the use of Canvas shells for non-class projects and activities and the major issue is that, while faculty and students are interested in this use of Canvas, they do not want to add more traffic to already flooded channels. The demands for communication vary from class to class and project to project and faculty and students should be able to adjust accordingly. Canvas is much easier to use and control than most institutional web management systems like OU Campus. Canvas is really missing the boat on expanded uses my having such a rudimentary communications set-up.

Students and faculty are simply ignoring and thus missing messages because they are all bundled together into a one size fits no-one package. To reduce frequency they have messages come in once a day and then do not open that digest or skim it and miss things.

Many faculty have set-up specific email addresses for each class in order to regulate traffic and organize students who may be in several classes simultaneously with that instructor and thus what class the student is contacting that instructor about is unclear. Many faculty teach up to five classes and may have to manage a hundred students or more. It would be helpful to be able segregate traffic at the course level. While this can be accomplished by using the message in-box in Canvas, it is not as convenient or easy to use as an email interface.

I would go on to argue that treating all communications from all sources the same is not very functional because they are not all the same. An announcement via that feature from an instructor should go out as a stand alone priority message apart from other notifications. For that matter, I would like to see it delivered in full length and in html so users do not have to then visit the shell to read/view it. 

-TED

[hesspe]

Thanks for your update, Cosme.  It makes such a difference to know you folks are listening and understand the value of a suggestion like this one, and at the same time to have the information that because of the size of the task, implementation is a long-term prospect.

[hvaughn]

There is another idea now open for voting regarding the ability to control notifications for conferences.  This one targets notifications for conferences used in high enrollment tutoring and support lab "courses".

[kristin_bayless]

I agree!  If the notification itself had some indication of the course (or if no course, the account) for which it was submitted, the user's email could be set up to filter the messages into different folders.  This would be a huge help for teachers.

[vkg]

I'm still seeing a need for this at the University of Michigan, especially when instructor are simultaneously teaching two courses:  a small course as the sole instructor, and a large course with a team of TAs.  In this case, faculty want to receive ASAP notifications for the small course, but not the large one (where their TAs handle more of the student contact).

Any update on when this might be added to the Canvas roadmap?