An Issue With My Notification Settings

[ElisabethRober5]

I am a student Canvas user, and I want to make sure that I see any announcements made by one of my instructors. To that end, I have previously set my Notifications settings so that I am notified immediately through my email when an instructor makes an announcement on Canvas. However, when I went into a Canvas course yesterday (January 31), I noticed that one of the instructors for that course had made an announcement on Tuesday (January 28), but I didn't receive any email about it. I checked my Notifications settings for both my account as a whole and for that class in particular, and both were set to notify me immediately when an instructor made an announcement, as expected (see attached screenshots). I also don't believe that it's a problem with my email inbox, as I've received multiple emails about Canvas announcements in other courses over the last few days, too. 

Is there any clear way to fix this notification issue? Thank you. 

[Jeff_F]

Hello @ElisabethRober5 - in the course Announcements area, are you able to see the instructor's name and profile image to the left of the announcement title or are you seeing a U in the circle with no name such as show here?

Image source: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-copy-an-announcement-to-another-course/... 

If you are seeing the U that indicates to me that the instructor copied the announcement from a prior course. While that saves the instructor time, the downside is the student notifications are not sent. 

 

[ElisabethRober5]

Hello @Jeff_F,

I am able to see the instructor's profile image to the left of the announcement title, just not their name (although that's normal for the announcements that I receive). The instructor does not seem to have copied the announcement from a prior course.

Is there any other plausible cause for the fact that I didn't receive an email notification from Canvas about this announcement? Thank you. 

[Jeff_F · Accepted solution]

@ElisabethRober5 - below is a list of things to check (generated by Google Search AI). However, as you are receiving announcement notifications from other courses I suggest contacting Canvas Support.

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1. Verify that your email address is spelled correctly.

You can click on the account button and select settings. You should see your email address listed under the Ways To Contact area to the right of the screen. If the email address is misspelled, you won't receive the notifications. I have seen this from time to time. 

2. Is your email address confirmed in Canvas?

When you go to your account settings, does your email address show an exclamation point next to it? If so, that would indicate that your email address has not been confirmed as a contact method and Canvas cannot send anything to you. If that is the case, you should be able to click on the email address and send a new confirmation to the address. Simply check your email and see if you have received something from Canvas about confirming the address. There should be a link in the email you can click on to confirm it. 

3. Make sure your notification preferences are setup correctly.

You have already checked this, but sometimes those notification preferences will be setup to never notify you, notify you immediately, notify you daily, or even notify you weekly. 

4. Are the notifications going to your junk/spam mail folders?

I'm assuming you have already checked this also, but I am including just in case. Many times, I've noticed that some of my notifications will go to the junk/spam mail folders accidentally. If they are going to those folders, you can mark them so that they are no longer counted as spam/junk. 

5. Contact Canvas support.

If you still cannot receive notifications, you can try to contact Canvas support and they can take a look to see what is going on with your outgoing notifications. In some cases, further action will be required on their end to resolve this. They will need you to confirm a few things on this. One of those being that you can send and receive emails from that address.