Gradebook has been broken for over a month. Please help!

[mwood37]

My gradebook has been completely broken since the first day of school and I need some urgent help. What do I mean by completely broken? I mean when I click on grade book for any of my courses I get a spinning wheel but nothing ever loads. No matter how long you wait nothing loads at all.

I requested help 6 weeks ago and was given the case number of  09015085 but have not received any help since which is infuriating. Does canvas support their product or not?

Solutions which do not work so please do not suggest these again. 

1) refresh cache - I  have tried this on multiple computers and multiple browsers. This is not a cache issue. 

2) Speed Grader setting on home page. It is already enabled.

3) File size limit - I'm only using a small fraction of my allotted file size and already removed any large files.

My district also contacted Canvas support and there only suggestion was #2 above in regards to speed grader. All the money we paid and they respond with an inane suggestion that doesn't solve anything.

I have heard nothing from Canvas support in weeks and my patience has run out. Unless this grade book issue is fixed soon I will make it my mission to get our district to switch to an alternate platform that actually listens and assists customers.

A couple of other points that may be important to resolve my problem. My course has a total of 6 classes cross-sectioned with around 180 students total. There are also a large number of assignments and quizzes. However, I had the same number last year and had no problems. 

My sandbox classes with no students or assignments at all also have broken grade book which fails to load no matter how long I wait. SO obviously this has nothing to do with the number of students, sections, or assignments.

The courses I did not create, for example the PD course for the school, where I am a student work fine. The grade book only seems broken for courses I created but works fine where I am a student.

It it clear that there is something seriously corrupted at a deeper level like the database or similar which will require a higher tier Canvas tech support person to fix. Please help me resolve this issue because it is severely impacting the education of 180 students. Please help. Thanks in advance but after 6 weeks of no assistance at all I am dubious this last cry for help will fare any better.

[KristinL · Accepted solution]

Hi @mwood37 -

Instructure is able to see the ticket you've filed with Support, but your local Canvas Admin needs to escalate it to the L1 queues. Unfortunately, it has been there for quite some time. And while we can see the updates, Support cannot interact with the case until it's been officially forwarded to Canvas. I have been collaborating with Bibb County's Customer Success  Manager about this case, and they've been in contact with your local Admin team. Hopefully, you'll see some progress on this issue soon.

[Ron_Bowman]

@mwood37 -

Sorry to hear about the issue you are having.  I don't think the class size or number of sections should be an issue as you noted.  It may take a few seconds to load the gradebook but not go into the spinning wheel of death.

I am surprised that Canvas support has not done a better job of trying to help you resolve the issue.

My only suggestion (which hopefully is possible) would be to have your Canvas admins create a new course,  put all the students in it and transfer all material to it.  Then make sure that course works and delete the one that does not.  I would think they should be able to do that without any difficulty.

[Chris_Hofer]

Good morning, @mwood37 ...

Before I responded, I wanted to check in with a Canvas Community Manager that I know...as she has access to some things that I do not.  Regarding the ticket number that you referenced, it sounds like the ticket is stuck at your district-level Canvas admin rather than the Canvas Help Desk.  Your school's Canvas administrator needs to escalate it to Instructure (the folks that make Canvas) so that it gets looked at by Canvas Support.

I hope this will help a bit.  Thanks!

[mwood37]

Thank you for the suggestions. That case number came directly from Instructure. I filed a tech ticket with my district as well but they issued a different number. I am in the unfortunate position of no one wanting to take responsibility and they keep trying to pass me off to a new person. 

I think if the right person at Instructure notices this thread they could probably fix it in 5 minutes. I will certainly pass on the suggestion to create a new course from scratch and confirm the gradebook loads then delete the corrupted account. But thanks again for the help which is more than I have received thus far. 

[mwood37]

Quick update. It is now 10 weeks into this issue and I still don't have a fix. Their only "solutions" so far has been to suggest reducing the number of files and deleting duplicates. But if that were the problem why would my sandbox accounts with no students, files, assignments, files, or quizzes also have a dysfunctional and completely broken gradebook if the problem is having too many unpublished assignments? Keep in mind I am only using 1GB out of my allotted 9GB. 

I am beyond frustrated. Dear Instructure: If you are reading this please elevate this to a higher tiered tech who knows what they are doing. I just sent Instructure support an email with more details. 

[KristinL · Accepted solution]

Hi @mwood37 -

Instructure is able to see the ticket you've filed with Support, but your local Canvas Admin needs to escalate it to the L1 queues. Unfortunately, it has been there for quite some time. And while we can see the updates, Support cannot interact with the case until it's been officially forwarded to Canvas. I have been collaborating with Bibb County's Customer Success  Manager about this case, and they've been in contact with your local Admin team. Hopefully, you'll see some progress on this issue soon.

[mwood37]

Thank you for getting back to me. Somewhere along the line someone dropped the ball. Hopefully the person that needs to escalate this to a higher level tech will finally do that because I am confident your L1's could easily identify and fix the problem. I am terrified to create any new assignments or modules on Canvas until I know the gradebook is working again. My background is in IT and I would be curious to know what caused this issue if you could let me know either here or privately by email. Thanks for your assistance

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @mwood37,

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from you. We hope you are doing well and that you’ve found an answer to your question!

In addition to @KristinL working to get Instructure and your local team in sync (which I marked as a temporary solution to help Community Members find and respond to the newest and most active threads.), I also know the behavior you described can be caused by outdates browsers or operating systems.  If you're in IT, you probably do have things updated, but it's something to at least double check.  Canvas only works with the latest 2 versions of browsers, and having your operating system as up to date as possible also helps.

At any time, any Community member can click the “Not the Solution” option and then respond in-thread with your follow-up questions. It’s important to include @CommunityForums in that reply so we can restore the entire topic to our list of unanswered questions we check routinely.

-Chris