Allocating Theme for Sandboxes

[Mr_Wood]

My school has a custom CSS file we use to help with overall school branding, but I recently found out that this didn't apply to our staff sandboxes.

Looking into it due to the sandboxes being held in a different admin account of "Sandboxes and Training" the CSS applied to "Teaching and Learning" of course didn't apply. Yet, the sandboxes and training does not have an option to edit or allocate a theme.

Is there a way that this can be enabled?

P.S. I'm on the hobbled version of canvas made for Education Queensland, QLearn, so it may be something easily available in the full version, but thought I'd ask to make sure

[kylieannpugh]

Hello, there! 

There could be several things at play here:

• There might be permission restrictions that are preventing the theming "option" from showing up in that specific sub-account. This would mean that the root admin is preventing sub-account admins from changing their own theme. 
• If the permissions are not an issue, you should be able to go into the settings of the particular sub-account and select from the options provided. 
• Another option would be to apply that custom theming at the root account and let it trickle down to the various sub-accounts. 

Here is the general guide for theming in case you missed it: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Admin-Guide/How-do-I-create-a-theme-for-an-account-using-the-Them...

And here are the restrictions that come with custom CSS/JS: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Admin-Guide/How-do-I-upload-custom-JavaScript-and-CSS-files-to-an... 

[Mr_Wood]

I'm not sure that it's a sub-account; currently I have three admin options and I share highest admin rights with a few other teachers.

We have:
[School] - Teaching and Learning (Can apply themes here)
[School] - Sandboxes and Training (No theme option)
[School] - Imports and Archive (No theme option)

These three are not layered, as far as I can tell they're separate accounts. Almost all our courses are in the teaching and learning under various sub-accounts, but the three accounts mentioned above are not nested nor does anybody at our school have access to any other accounts that they would be part of either.

It could be that somebody in central office for Education Queensland holds a single account for all of our state schools and each [School] - #### is actually a sub-account of a single Education Queensland account. While you haven't solved my question, you have given me an avenue to pursue as I wasn't yet aware restriction of permissions to other admins could be done like that

[kylieannpugh]

I would start there! If you find that you have the deepest root account possible, we can revisit! 

[dbrace · Accepted solution]

Hi @Mr_Wood,

I was just playing around in "beta" because my institution does not apply different branding/themes to different (sub)accounts. We also do not have a complex sub-account heirachy.

While look at settings for my root account, I came across the "Let sub-accounts use the Theme Editor to customize their own branding" setting. We have it not checked.

When that setting is not checked and I go into the settings for any sub-account (including any sub-accounts under another sub-account), "Themes" did not appear on the left-side.

When that setting is checked and I go into the settings for any sub-account (including any sub-accounts under another sub-account), "Themes" does appear on the left-side.

I applied a different theme that I quickly created to one of my sub-accounts under another sub-account.  After doing that, as I switched from one course using the original theme to another course using the new theme, my I saw the changes.

If you are not able to customize or are not experiencing what I have tried to do and describe, there is probably something unique your permissions or (sub)accounts or entire instance.

Have you reported this directly to Canvas Support so that they can look at this with/for you?

-Doug

[Mr_Wood]

It's likely that it's the way our Canvas is set-up

The Queensland Government in Australia has got a hobbled version of Canvas they call QLearn for all public schools; and each school gets three accounts; but I suspect what's actually happening is that Central office has the overarching account, and then each school gets three sub-accounts and it's one of these I was wanting to change around.

Good information thank you, enough for me to put together a full picture of what's happening