Canvas API Email Change Confirmation Issue: Any Solutions?

[joel_taylor]

Canvas API Email Change Confirmation Issue: Any Solutions?

I recently created a script that edits users using the Canvas API (https://canvas.instructure.com/doc/api/users.html#method.users.update). The script is pretty straightforward: you insert the user ID and the details you want to change, and it's updated via the API. I did this for emails because our school was changing the format of the emails.

Issue:

After updating the emails, I noticed an issue when adding enrollments manually to courses. I tried to add a student to a course using the new email address, but the new email address was not recognized. I contacted Instructure, and they advised that the new emails were waiting to be confirmed by the user. However, this was not feasible for the majority of our students, either because they don't see the request to confirm or because they never use Canvas (e.g., primary-aged students).

Solutions Tried:

• A Simple Python POST Script Creating a New User - user[skip_confirmation] when creating a new user.
• Canvas Production Release Notes 2016-11-19 - This refers to the notice that was first published about changes to the API.
• Canvas Deploy Notes 2024-08-14 - Refers to the use of ‘auto-confirm,’ but this seems applicable to something else.

Current Approach:

My main method to fix the issue is to change the emails back to their original addresses and then run the script again using "skip_confirmation" = $true. Most of the answers suggest using some combination of skip_confirmation set to true. I've been trying to test various uses of skip_confirmation, but I haven't found a method that works.

Request for Help:

I was wondering if anyone else has had any success in getting this to work. There is another method about fixing the confirmation problem after the fact without changing the email again, described in this link. This link refers to communication channels, but I'm uncertain what is meant by communication channels in this context.

If anyone has experience with the confirmation of email addresses or can provide insight into the use of communication channels in Canvas, I would greatly appreciate your help. Thank you!

[melodyc_lam]

@joel_taylor -- I've had a lot of experience with comm channels in Canvas as I often have to 'reset' the channel so students can get emails again. 🙂

Our district is coincidentally also going through an email change (starting this summer) so it's nice to hear other institution's experiences.

The comm channels refer to the notification methods that you can have on your account. ("Ways to Contact" on your settings page.)

If the email address on this screen has a red exclamation point, then the email hasn't been validated and you won't be able to add the user to courses using their email address. To resolve this, you need to delete this email address and then re-add it with the code that was provided in the link you sent under "request for help". You can do this through the API, here's a sample of code (in Python). Hope this helps!

create_url = API_URL + f'/api/v1/users/{user_id}/communication_channels'

body = {
'communication_channel[address]' : user_email,
'communication_channel[type]' : 'email',
'skip_confirmation': True
}

response = s.post(create_url, data = body)
print(response.json()) #confirm that the channel was created