Customization of the Rich Content Editor

[ErnestChan]

Hi Everyone,

I have a question on the customization of the Rich Content Editor on Canvas. We would like to move the "insert video" button on the editor to stop our faculty members uploading their video files to the courses locally. We have reached out to the Canvas L1 support team for any possible solution and they suggest editing the theme editor with CSS/Javascript could solve this issue. Does anyone here has experience in updating the RCE editor before? Any wonderful learning resources should I go to for the the customization of the Rich Content Editor on Canvas?

Best,
Ernest Chan

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @ErnestChan,

I think you'll find modifying the RCE via css/js to be a pretty challenging task, as it is in so many places in Canvas and not all load it the exact same way.  It's also in New Quizzes, which is technically an external tool so won't have any js/css applied at all.  Reading the description of what you want to do though, I think Canvas has a buikd-in feaure for this. You can choose any two external tools with an RCE placement and have them appear right on the toolbar following the How do I add an external tool to the Rich Content ... - Instructure Community - 398262 guide.  Does that seem like it would work for you?

-Chris

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Aha, I see!  There is a Canvas setting to help this too!  In your root account -> settings area, you should see a checkbox option "Disable uploads to Canvas Media from the enhanced rich content editor."  If you check that option and save, I believe the insert video option you referenced will disappear from the RCE.

-Chris

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @ErnestChan,

I think you'll find modifying the RCE via css/js to be a pretty challenging task, as it is in so many places in Canvas and not all load it the exact same way.  It's also in New Quizzes, which is technically an external tool so won't have any js/css applied at all.  Reading the description of what you want to do though, I think Canvas has a buikd-in feaure for this. You can choose any two external tools with an RCE placement and have them appear right on the toolbar following the How do I add an external tool to the Rich Content ... - Instructure Community - 398262 guide.  Does that seem like it would work for you?

-Chris

[ErnestChan]

Thanks for your response Chris. We already enabled one of the external tool we used for video storage called "yuja" in the toolbar and it is working well. The issue we are having is that by default the RCE have a button called "insert video" which will allow users to upload video files from their local machine to a canvas course. We are trying to stop them this function because that would tremendously increase the storage size of the course. 

Definitely agree that updating the JS file is a challenging. I will definitely use all the Generative AI tool out there for my coding assistant.

- Ernest

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Aha, I see!  There is a Canvas setting to help this too!  In your root account -> settings area, you should see a checkbox option "Disable uploads to Canvas Media from the enhanced rich content editor."  If you check that option and save, I believe the insert video option you referenced will disappear from the RCE.

-Chris

[ErnestChan · Accepted solution]

Thank you Chris! I just tried it on our test instance and the upload media button on the RCE is gone. Let me share with this update with my team! 

Have a nice weekend!

- Ernest