I have a few Chrome browser settings and extensions that I thought might be useful to other admins, and would bet that many others in the community have developed other shortcuts to save time. Please share yours in the comments!
Easily search for a user or course
Chrome’s “Custom Search Engines” allow you to type a few letters in the URL bar to easily search your Canvas users or courses.
Start by doing a search in Canvas to make sure you have the URL for a search. For example:
https://canvas.instructure.com/accounts/1?search_term=awesomeness
Chrome allows you to easily fill in what appears above as “awesomeness” to whatever your course search might be.
In Chrome Settings, under Manage Search Engines, add a new search engine at the bottom. Give it a name and paste the URL you grabbed into the URL box — and change “awesomeness” to %s. Finally add a letter combination that you’ll remember (I use “cp” for Courses on Production). Searching for a course is now as easy as going to the url bar (command L makes this even quicker), typing cp, and entering the name of the course you want to search for. Repeat for users, other instances, or even other websites you search frequently.
Log into the Community single sign on with a default Canvas instance
I was always mildly annoyed at having to pick a Canvas instance with the SSO for the Community and ticketing system (perhaps I have too many). I recently discovered a Chrome Extension, Edit This Cookie, which allows you to edit and lock the cookie such that only your default Canvas instance is loaded, eliminating the dropdown menu that adds a few clicks to the login process.
When you see the SSO page on login, edit the cookie for sso.canvaslms.com such that the last_known_canvas_host has only the value of the Canvas instance you want and protect it so that it won’t be overwritten when you visit other instances.
