Adding People via Email Not Working

[cgaudreau]

We are noticing a behavior that, when adding enrollments to a course that is not synced with our Student Information System (say, a faculty development or cohort-specific internship class), we are unable to use the participant email address. Only the Login ID and SIS options are working, and not all the time.

Wondering if anyone else is running into similar roadblocks - I didn't see this request in other posts, nor via release notes (unless I missed something).

[matthew_west]

I have had this issue as well. Canvas support told me that you can only enroll users with verified email addresses when adding by email. So if you manually create a new account and the user has not logged in to verify their email address, you will not be able to add them to a course via email address and will have to use SIS ID or username instead.

[cgaudreau]

Thanks, @matthew_west. The weird thing is that it happens with registered and active users - students, faculty and staff that are added via SIS - as well as new users.

Appreciate the insight - this is helpful for new users, though I'll see if anyone else chimes in before we escalate to Tier One support.

[nwilson7]

@cgaudreau I have had a few of these as well that for whatever reason I can't use their email address to add them.  Fortunately for us, their email address is also their Login ID, so I have just switched the radial to Login ID and then it has worked.  I have only had it happen like 2 or 3 times and since I got it with the switch to Login ID, I did not really think much of it.

-Nick

[cdunn4]

This has happened for our school this year.  Users (Students) have not been sync'd from powerschool into Canvas.  The resulting email add has caused issues with the grade sync following the manual add.  Are any of you powerschool users?  Have you experienced difficulties following the manual addition of a student to the course?

I would think it was designed to work or else Canvas would not have given teachers a +People to click.

[cgaudreau]

@cdunn4 we don't use Powerschool, but I'm getting the sense that this ought to be escalated at this point. I'm going to push a request via the Admin Console.

[cgaudreau]

@matthew_west Got the same response via ticket escalation. I'm wondering if there is something about our onboarding process and Single Sign On requirements that are jamming up the works for some users. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[c-mc]

I'm having this issue also. I can only enroll users with verified email addresses when adding by email. So if that user has not logged in to verify their email address, I can't add them to a course via email address. It says to use SIS ID (which we're not using) or login ID instead. Does anyone know how I can look up a user's login ID? Thanks!

[cgaudreau]

@c-mc The login ID ought to be the email address that is associated with their Canvas login minus the "at" suffix. For example, instead of "student@institution.edu " it would be just "student" - hope that sorts things out for you.

[c-mc]

Thanks, @cgaudreau ! That's what I thought, but when I try to enroll the student with that info, I get this error message:  "We were unable to find matches below. Select any you would like to create as new users. Unselected will be skipped at this time."

Then, when I try to add them as a new user, I get this message: "The email address provided conflicts with an existing user's email that is awaiting verification. Please add the user by either SIS ID or Login ID."

So it seems to not recognize that as the Login ID (which is why I thought it might be something different) and then send me around in circles. I must be doing something wrong! Any thoughts? Appreciate any help!

[cgaudreau]

@c-mc  I wonder if there are some specifics to your institution that are jamming things up along the way. You might want to connect with a registrar, IT, Canvas Admin, etc. group to see what is considered the "login ID" based on the established protocols of the group.

Sorry I don't have more concrete details to share: at my institution, we have a fairly in-depth pipeline from SIS to Canvas, including registrar, ITS, Instructional Design and Canvas Admin, with a through-line to HR. My experience might be limited to a specific scope here.

[c-mc]

Thanks, appreciate your advice, @cgaudreau !

[clpatter]

My typical workflow for Canvas Guest User accounts is to create their account with their email address as their Login ID and then immediately add them to the course. I've been doing it this way for years. No need to wait for them to log in to Canvas first, I can just create their account and then add them to the course using the Login ID option on the people page.

Suddenly yesterday, that didn't work. The users are in the Canvas, but can't be added to a course because they haven't logged in yet.

My main issue with this is that we don't get any notification letting us know that they've logged in for the first time, so we're now expected to keep checking back over and over until we see they've logged in, and then we can add them to the course? This doesn't seem like something Canvas would have planned on purpose.

[CatalogEmilyT]

My "Like" is really an "Unlike" as we seem to have been bitten by this bug for the first time, after years of adding many thousands of users by email address with no error. No idea why we can no longer add by email address but adding by "Login ID" does seem to work. Did the email confirmation process just start sometime in Fall 2023?

P.S. This is in our not-for-credit Canvas Catalog instance (thus no integration with SIS).