Delaying announcements no longer possible. Is 'available from' the same?

[WayneXYZ]

I'm confused about a recent interface change.

The option to delay an announcement is gone. It seems to have been replaced with "Available from" and "until" forms. These don't seem to work the same: I drafted and saved an announcement on 30 July, and set its "available from" date to 25 August. When I look at Canvas now, it says the announcement was posted on 30 July, which is contrary to how this used to work and contrary to what I expected. 

Hence my confusion.

I also don't know whether students actually received any notification of this or not. I can't ask them in person since classes haven't started yet.

[BrianLester · Accepted solution]

Yes "AVAILABLE FROM" is the new "DELAY UNTIL"

when I create an announcement with an available from date in the future I get a message like

"This announcement will not be visible until Aug 28 12am"

I'm not sure if students will receive notifications in your case, as other issues might be important -eg are courses accessible/ published, have starts opened etc

[JenMurphyA]

Hey, @WayneXYZ - I just wanted to add that when an announcement will not be posted until later, it says "Delayed until: " on the Announcements page. Additionally, you can "test" the visibility of the announcement for students by using the View as Student button. 

I suspect you are calling into question the fact that you created the announcement 30 July, requested it to post on 25 August, and now that 25 August is past, the announcement says "Posted on 30 July". I am not sure why that is. When you delay an announcement and it eventually posts, the day it actually appears should be the Posted On date. However, the created date (which you can see when you open the announcement) would be the date you created it, 30 July. 

Hope this helps,

Jen

[kcjenkinsnl]

I have this same problem. Plus, when I view in in student mode, the delayed/scheduled announcements still show the original creation date and any editing dates instead of the date it was scheduled to be posted. This actually defeats a great purpose of the feature.

[JenMurphyA]

@kcjenkinsnl and @WayneXYZ - Were these announcements imported? Have you tried creating new delayed announcements that work as expected? think it would be worth contacting support about these delayed announcement issues. The support team can look more closely at your announcement settings and see what's going on. 

[kcjenkinsnl]

@JenMurphyAMine are all newly created. In fact, the only workaround I have been able to use to not have the creation date show is to create a separate new Canvas course, create all scheduled/delayed announcements in that course, and then import them into my actual Canvas course. Of course, that is a ridiculously time-consuming amount of effort. But, that's better than students seeing the actual creation/editing date(s) and feeling that I'm somehow disingenuous because I already anticipate when they need certain information delivered to them.

[WayneXYZ]

My announcements were imported. It seems that imported announcements do not correctly display the "available from" date.

[kcjenkinsnl]

@JenMurphyAand @WayneXYZ , I found that it depends on which page you look at when it comes to the "available from" date. The overall Announcements page will show the correct "Delayed until" date for both newly created and imported announcements. However once the announcement posts, the "Posted on" date on the Announcements page shows the creation date, not the availability date, for both new and imported announcements.

But in the announcement itself, all dates and times (creation, last date/time edited, and availability) show in newly created announcements; only availability dates show in the announcement in imported announcements.