Conference notification issue

[davies1]

I am attempting to practice the use of the conference option in canvas; currently this option is disabled (not visible) for my students.

I successfully created a new conference to practice how it worked, being careful to not invite any students, and yet despite this it seems the students received a notification of a "Web conference invitation".

How can I make sure, while playing around with how it works, that I am the only one that receives a notification (i.e. how do I disable the notification to the students?

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello  @davies1 ...

Something you might want to consider is logging in to your school's "test" or "beta" environment.  (Not sure if you knew those existed...but they do!)  When you log in to Canvas each day (like you normally do), that is called the "production" environment.  But, there are these other two environments, too, that do not affect anything you would do in the "production" environment.  The "test" environment is where you can try out things (such as "Conferences") without sending notifications to your students.  The "beta" environment is typically where Instructure puts their new updates and releases for us to look at and give feedback on prior to those things being pushed to the "production" environment each month.  So, give one of these environments a try...making sure to log out of "test" or "beta" before logging back in to your school's normal "production" environment.

• How do I access the Canvas test environment as an instructor?‌
• How do I access the Canvas beta environment as an instructor?‌

I hope this helps, Peter!

[davies1]

Chris, Thank you this is very helpful; I did not know the test environment existed and have just been able to locate it successfully. 

By the way do you happen to know why the students were be receiving notifications to the conference on the "real" site even when they were not invited?

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello there,  @davies1 ...

By the way do you happen to know why the students were be receiving notifications to the conference on the "real" site even when they were not invited?

Unfortunately, I don't have an answer for you on that one.  However, I am going to tag  @ffdixon ‌ in this response in hopes that he might be able to shed some light on this for you.

[ysmalls]

Hi  @davies1 ,

I believe the students got notified because of their Notifications settings.

Have a great day.