[ARCHIVED] Canvas Sub-Account Interface

[hesspe]

I think it would be lovely if Sub-Accounts and the Courses within them were displayed in an window interface very similar to that of New Files, with the Sub-Account hierarchy in the right pane and Courses and child Sub-Accounts belonging to the selected Sub-Account in the left column.  (In other words, Sub-Accounts would be treated like Folders in the Files interface, and Courses treated like Files.)

Since we use up to four levels of hierarchy in our account (and all four levels may contain Courses, which I realize may not be a "best practice" but is not going to change), I find it less than useful that if I select a Sub-Account at a higher level, I see all of the courses from that node all the way down the hierarchy.  (I just want to see what's contained in that Sub-Account).  When I'm in a Sub-Account (or the Root account), I also get impatient about always having to click "Sub-Accounts" in the left Nav Bar to re-display the Sub-Accout hierarchy.

I thought I might post this as a feature request, but I wanted to try it out here in case:

- there are reasons that I'm not aware of for things being as they are

- an existing feature request that covers the same ground (though I couldn't find one)

- people have additional suggestions that they'd like to see added into the feature request.

Thanks,

-Peter

[dgrobani]

I got so frustrated with navigating subaccounts that I created a simple HTML page of our subaccounts, each one indented below its parent and hyperlinked to its Canvas page. I put it on my personal web server and gave it a two-letter keyword in Firefox. Now I can quickly navigate directly to any subaccount.

[hesspe]

It's reassuring to know that someone else has struggled with sub account navigation.  Thanks for the idea.  I'd been thinking about using a folder of bookmarks that went to sub-accounts, but I like your suggestion  better and I built myself an html page.  It's still not as smooth as a file manager interface a la Mac or Windows or Canvas, but I think it will help me out.  Our sub account structure has four levels: Root: School: Department: Course (where course represents the course number like PHIL1001 and contains  instances of PHIL1001 course sites.)  I don't know that this is the best way to set up a sub-account structure, but it's what we got.  My HTML page only goes down to the Department level because it would be unmanageably long otherwise, but it still means I have to hit the Sub-Account link if I want to see the Course Sub accounts within a Department.  In a file manager type interface I could navigate down to the Course account and for us at least it would be a good alternative way to locate and manage course sites.  Plus it would look a lot more elegant.

[Robbie_Grant]

 @hesspe ,

We are giving the Canvas Admins area a little bit of love (especially questions that are really, really old) and just want to check in with you.  This will also bring this question new attention. 

Were you able to find an answer to your question? I am going to go ahead and mark this question as answered because there hasn't been any more activity in a while so I assume that you have the information that you need. If you still have a question about this or if you have information that you would like to share with the community, by all means, please do come back and leave a comment.  Also, if this question has been answered by one of the previous replies, please feel free to mark that answer as correct.

Robbie