Announcements showing wrong date and time when delayed?

[arbobk]

Hi there, not sure if this is from a new Canvas update, but whenever I create my announcements, I usually select the delay post option.
I believe the option is now called "Available from".

Whenever the announcement is published and students are available to see, it does show up on the scheduled time, which is no issue. But the problem is that the time that it shows when the announcement was published, it shows a different time. Most likely when the original announcement was created.

As for the example above, the announcements should have the date July 21 and July 22.  The date that it shows, July 20, is the day when I originally created the announcement. The time is also wrong. Where the announcements should have been 1:00pm and 12:00pm, respectively.

Is there a setting I should change or is this a known issue right now?

Thanks,
AK

[TamasBalogh · Accepted solution]

Hi all, 

We designed and implemented a fix for this issue which will be deployed to beta in the next beta deploy and after that to production. You will be able to see the details in the upcoming deploy notes (published on October 11).
What we've done is faculty members will see 3 dates: created date, posted on date and last edited date.
Students will see 2 dates: posted on date and last edited date, where the last edited date will be visible only if it is happened after the publishing. 

[Chris_Hofer]

@arbobk ...

The Announcements/Discussions Redesign was enforced for all Canvas schools this past Saturday, July 20, 2024.  You can read more about this at:

Canvas Release Notes (2024-07-20) - Instructure Community - 606797 (canvaslms.com)

[arbobk]

Unfortunately, I don't think this answers my question. I don't see anywhere on the guide that says the time displayed on the announcement will be different from the actual publish time. If you see in the article: How do I delay posting an announcement until a specific date in a course? It says:

You can set new announcements to post at a certain date and time. The delayed post information also displays directly in the Announcements page. Delayed announcements are not displayed to students until the intended date and time.

Per my example in the first post, I have set the announcement to publish July 22, 2024 at 12:00pm, but Canvas is displaying July 20 at 4:48pm. This can confuse the students on when the announcement was supposed to be shown to them.

 

Unless I am not seeing what you are talking about, this feels like more like a bug in the update?

Thanks,
AK

[Chris_Hofer]

@arbobk ...

Thanks for the clarification.  Sorry that I didn't include more information in my initial response.  I was mainly responding to your question where you had stated, "not sure if this is from a new Canvas update", and I wanted to share with you the Release Notes from this past Saturday that, yes, there was an update (in case you or others don't regularly follow the Release Notes).

I was able to re-create the example you described in my own sandbox course.  I created an delayed announcement that I wanted posted at 6:54 p.m. this evening.  I saved the announcement at 6:52 p.m.  When I looked at my "Announcements" screen, it said that the announcement I created was delayed until July 26, 2024 @ 6:54 p.m.  However, when the announcement actually appeared, the time displayed like it was posted on 6:52 p.m.

I'm honestly not sure if this is intended behavior or if it is a bug.  I'd recommend that you reach out to Canvas technical support to report this...just in case.  How do I get help with Canvas as an instructor?

Please report back once you get more information from the Help Desk staff.  Thanks!

[arbobk]

No worries! And thanks for actually testing that out, knowing that it's not just me, that's somewhat of a relief.

I will go ahead and submit a ticket then. I will also direct them to this thread if that's okay?

Thanks,
AK

[Chris_Hofer]

@arbobk ...

Yes, you can direct them to this thread if you like to use our conversation as a reference.  Thanks!

[Leslie-Dugger]

I also had this question because the last announcement I posted had timing issues but it looks like they fixed it, at least I can now see announcements posting at the time I scheduled them. Is it working for you? 

[arbobk]

Hi there! Yes it looks like it resolved this past weekend... but the only note I do have is that it still shows the original creation date on the post, which I do not wish my students to see. It also shows the time it will be published as the "edited" date. Not sure why this is a feature. why is this necessary? 

[Leslie-Dugger]

I see that too on mine, it is a little odd and unnecessary.  Chris_Hofer, is this another ticket to be submitted?

I just checked an announcement from pre-update and it also shows up the same way in the post. I never noticed it until now though. I agree with AK that there is no reason to see the original creation date on the post and could cause confusion for students. 

[Chris_Hofer]

@Leslie-Dugger ...

It's up to you if you want to submit a ticket.  However, if you do report it, that would give Instructure more information and examples to look at to see if their code needs to be reviewed and/or fixed.

[KM1543]

I just talked to Canvas about the issue of students seeing the two timestamps, the first being the stamp when the announcement was created, and the "Edited" timestamp showing when the announcement was released.

Canvas Support says that with this new version there is no way to hide the first date, aka. the "created" date from the students. This change does away with the entire point of delaying the announcement in the first place, so I am not sure why they decided to code an announcement release as an edited action.

Canvas Support suggested that we encourage as many teachers as possible to use this platform to request this to change in future updates.

[arbobk]

Thanks for contacting Canvas about it. More confusion of course ....

So there's no way to hide the first date? But it wasn't a thing before? 

Also do they want as many teachers to reply to this thread? Then they'll make a decision? Not all teachers use this feature. Or perhaps even notice what's going on here.

Also like @SteveSiedschlag  was saying, it becomes a problem with the To-Do lists are using the creation dates. The delay post feature has no benefit at all with the creation date.

[KM1543]

@arbobk You are correct. Apparently with this new update, there is no way to hide either the first date or the edited date.

And from a student perspective, since that first date does not specify if it means the created or posted date, it is very confusing and may make a student wonder if they are not able to view new announcements promptly. 

Canvas Support basically told me that the more posts and online chatter they see about this issue, the better, so feel free to use any of these threads or post/comment in the Ideas/Theme section.

@SteveSiedschlag brought up a great point about this issue impacting the To-Do lists too. Thanks!

[reenie_arnold]

And, if a student checks the "Receive Announcements by email" box under their Notifications settings, they even see a DELETED Announcement to rectify the date string issue-- and is compounding the confusion for both instructor and student.

My only resolution is using the Gradebook feature, and "Message Students Who" to clarify; for example:

"Canvas Reminder to all in the course: X assignment deadline is X"; however there is no "Sent" receptacle for if/when this is used, and Canvas Inbox (another alternative) is not helpful, as the "Sent" feature does not have a filter, as it shows, which individuals received said Inbox message-- not as a bulk message, to track.

[reenie_arnold]

I am also seeking a resolution to this "new" feature to Canvas Announcements, which I rely on heavily to keep students apprised of reminders, updates, and edited changes to the course (for example, a pushed deadline). If I need to update a particular Announcement, THIS:



Is/are there any means of removing the multiple dates string for Announcements?

For online courses, many instructors rely HEAVILY on the Announcements feature for informing/updating/assisting students with reminders/updates for courses-- especially if there changes (for example, providing an extension to all enrolled.

They are seeing the created, posted, and edits like this:

Created Mar 5 1:15pm| Posted Mar 5 1:15pm| Last edited Mar 6 9:23am

for example, when I update/apply an addendum. IF I do this on a Friday evening for an assignment due the following week, this string of dates is/are confusing students, especially if they choose to be notified via email/Canvas Inbox when it comes to the Announcements feature.

If not, what is the best method for creating a pre-scheduled announcement that might need an edit? Should I delete it and re-post? Schedule the Announcement on the date it is due? All of these solutions are cumbersome for both students and instructors.

I wish the Created/Last edited feature could just be removed, and just keep the original date-- no matter how many times it needs to be edited, as it's become panic-inducing for students, and waste of time trying to answer individual Canvas Inbox messages explaining to just use the Calendar, To-Do List, Modules, and Grades to track deadlines. I would not like to lose the Announcement feature, but I am considering not using it anymore. However, Canvas Inbox is worse, since "Sent" messages are too difficult to track.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you so much!

[arbobk]

@Chris_Hofer 

@Leslie-Dugger 

Not sure why this post has been marked solved, but there are still issues with the date... (creation date and edit date)

Also, I did have a question regarding delayed announcements, that are edited. I am receiving the message "Would. you like to send a notification that the Announcement has been edited?" When the announcement was not even sent out yet. Does this mean it will also notify students that the announcement was edited? And if I click "Save and don't send" will they receive a notification at all?

Just a lot of confusion with the new announcement features.

[chriscas]

Hi @arbobk,

Just a quick note about the community here around the "solved/solution" bit.  That status helps identify questions/posts that have been answered.  The platform the community uses has the "solved" terminology, which I wish could be more easily tweaked, but t this point solved basically means answered.  For this thread, the "answer" at this point is to have people encountering these issues to contact support, as that's the best avenue to get bugs addressed.  We can chat about things and help direct people to guides and things in the Community here, but for genuine bugs or things that are basically broken, there isn't much the community can do to solve anything as almost all of us here are other Canvas users (whether admins, teachers, students or some other role).

I know the "solved" thing is confusing, but I hope this info helps a bit.  Any user can unmark an answer as the solution if they don't feel it's right, but there are definitely cases where the right answer is to go through a different avenue (like Canvas support).

-Chris

[Chris_Hofer]

@arbobk ...

I'm honestly not sure about the timing of those announcements, what happens when editing, and any notifications that get sent out.  I did find this Guide with some info in the light blue box at the top of the page which might be helpful:

How do I edit an announcement in a course?

Can I make a suggestion, though?  I'm not sure if you are familiar with this, but your school should have a separate "beta" and "test" Canvas environment.  These two environments are different than your school's Canvas "production" environment...which is the environment that you typically log into on a day-to-day basis.  The "test" environment is where you can do any kind of testing that you wouldn't want your students to see in a regular course.  The "beta" environment is where Instructure regularly releases updates and new features prior to their monthly Canvas Releases so that people can test new tools and provide feedback (good and bad) back to Instructure.  When using either of these environments, I always tell people to make sure to sign out of them before returning to the "production" environment...so that you don't get confused about which environment you are in.  Here is more info for you:

• What is the Canvas test environment?
• What is the Canvas beta environment?
• What is the Canvas release schedule for beta, production, and test environments?
• How do I access the Canvas test environment as an instructor?
• How do I access the Canvas beta environment as an instructor?
• How do I log out of Canvas as an instructor?

I mention this because you could use the "test" environment to go to your course and test out how the announcements work when editing...using a dummy student account.  However, if you are hoping to test out notifications via e-mail, that's not going to work in either "beta" or "test" (it would only work in "production").  In that case, you might have to try using a sandbox course with a dummy student in the sandbox course.  Or, you could maybe see if your school's local Canvas admin would be willing to do some test scenarios with you for your announcements.

I hope this gives you some things to consider...and some opportunities to do some testing on your own so you can see exactly how things work for your needs.  As always, if there are questions, feel free to post them here.  Thanks!

[reenie_arnold]

I wish this was helpful, but is language for creators, not instructors. 

The majority of people I discuss this with are finding that when we post an announcement for a delayed posted date OR edited, students are just confused about the string of dates. 

I have had to resort to deleting an announcement, and start over, explain IN the announcement, which is confusing students who receive them via Canvas notifications. They do not understand that the Announcement(s) in question are updated, not a "new" Announcement, and having to be so "careful" with pre-dating/editing them is getting really cumbersome and creating so many issues. 

[afitch]

I wonder the same thing. If I say 'send' will they get an edit notification about an announcement they can't see? If I say 'save & don't send' will they still get a notification when the announcements becomes visible? It is very unclear and annoying.

[SteveSiedschlag]

The problem is even bigger for us (multiple instructors and schools). If you create an announcement on August 1 and set it to be Available from August 15, it still shows up in the student's To Do list on their Home page any time after August 1. They are not able to open the announcement, but they can see the title. If the title is Class Ends Today it can be very confusing. I think that the To Do list announcements are using their creation date and not their Available date.

[arbobk]

Oh wow is this still an issue with the To Do lists?

[reenie_arnold]

For some admin settings: it is really confusing for students, especially if they set Announcements to be received via email. NO student should be receiving pre-scheduled announcement on a Friday, scheduled for a Monday a.m. reminder. 😞 NOR is it any student's "business" that an instructor was "working" on a Friday evening!

[rpsloan]

I can confirm it's still an issue. My reply from support is that this is intended and to put in a feature request but I am pushing back on it since it shouldn't use the create or edited date when displaying in the To Do.

[smasongarrison]

I echo the sentiment. This entirely defeats the purpose of prescheduling. And just leads to student confusion. This needs to be fixed.

[pattersonj]

I've read everything shared here and tried to figure out how best to let Instructure know that this "feature" is terrible for students and instructors. I can't think of any scenario where I or my students need to see the date an announcement was originally created (but perhaps not posted), will become available, and was edited. Some of my announcements now have three dates on them. My students only need to see when the announcement was posted. As instructors, we are no longer able to create announcements ahead of time without causing confusion. 

If there is a way to remove the "created" and "edited" dates and only show the "Posted" date as we had before July, that would be ideal. Just going back to the dates that showed pre-July. 

I'm not sure how best to help developers know that this feature is causing a lot of confusion for students and extra work for instructors. 

[afitch]

I am similarly frustrated by this aspect of the updates. I thought the announcements feature and delayed posting worked just fine before the updates, I wish they would change it back! Aside from commenting here, how do we push for this?

[TamasBalogh]

Hi everyone, thank you for pointing the issues out. I'm trying to gather all the information from the comments and reply to them:

It seems for me, the date will show the correct date (the available date set when creating the announcement). I was not able to reproduce the to-do list issue neither, if the available from date is in the future, I don't see the announcement in the to-do list of the students. Can you please check again if that issue still persists? 

[TamasBalogh]

@arbobk  I was going through more of the comments and I realized that you see the creation date and edited date in the announcement body itself which is clearly not ideal and not in sync with the Announcements index page. It is noted and we are going to change that. Thank you!

[Leslie-Dugger]

@pattersonj said it well: "If there is a way to remove the "created" and "edited" dates and only show the "Posted" date as we had before July, that would be ideal."

[SteveSiedschlag]

Thank you. The problem seems to be even more problematic when you copy a course to reuse in a later semester. Assuming the announcement dates are correctly changed as part of the copy, you may see an announcement in the ToDo list on a date that is NOT the availability date. The students cannot actually open the announcement early, but the heading shows up with a date that MAY be the creation OR the COPY date. Not totally sure which.

[reenie_arnold]

Thank you! All we are asking: REMOVE the "edited" dates... THE ONLY date students need to see is the posted OR created date-- nothing more, nothing less. And, turn off the "Notifications" feature for Announcement edits. Period. Students should not be privy to this-- they should only be notified of its posted date, and log into Canvas to check for any updates (I let my students know or can simply re-post the announcement in its entirety, if it needs to be THAT heavily updated).

[KM1543]

Thank you for looking into this. I would add to the comment by @pattersonj that in addition to the "Posted" date, it would be nice if an "Edited" date would appear in addition to the Posted date ONLY if the post is edited after it has been released to the students aka. Posted. 

[fterranova1]

An additional problem is it seems that notifications are being sent based on the "created" date, not the "posted on" date.

So if you import, reuse announcements from previous semesters, no notifications are being sent on the "posted on" date!

[afitch]

@fterranova1

Thanks for pointing this out. This is a huge problem for me. I teach an online course that I copy over from semester to semester with weekly announcements when modules open, etc. If students aren't getting these announcement notifications the whole feature is useless!

[fterranova1]

Here I was, thinking my students were getting all these important notifications at the start of the semester, but I guess not.

Now it seems that students will have to click on "Announcements" (or view the home page) in Canvas to see the latest announcements.  This seems like a giant step backward.

[venitk]

@TamasBalogh Tagging you to make sure you see this comment about when notifications are sent out. 

[TamasBalogh]

Hi, 

I agree we should only show the edited date if it was after the publishing date, and the creation date shouldn't visible to students. 
We are looking into the notification problems as well. 

[TamasBalogh · Accepted solution]

Hi all, 

We designed and implemented a fix for this issue which will be deployed to beta in the next beta deploy and after that to production. You will be able to see the details in the upcoming deploy notes (published on October 11).
What we've done is faculty members will see 3 dates: created date, posted on date and last edited date.
Students will see 2 dates: posted on date and last edited date, where the last edited date will be visible only if it is happened after the publishing. 

[fterranova1]

If students have push/email notifications set, which date will students receive these on--created date, posted on date, and/or last edited date?

In the past, push/email notifications were always sent based on when an announcement was posted on.

It seems that now, notifications can (sometimes?) be based on created date.  This is of no use when copying courses from one semester to the next.

For example, if I create announcements in July by copying a spring semester course into a fall semester Canvas shell, all or most of those announcements will have a July "created" date.  If notifications are based on that created date, my fall students won't get those notifications because that July "created date" has already passed.