How do I link to a discussion post?

[richardhaggarty]

Let's say I want to refer someone to a post that already exists, either in the same discussion or another discussion. Is there a way to do that using the tools? If not, is there a way to find the URL for a given discussion post?

[Stef_retired · Accepted solution]

richardhaggarty Welcome to the Canvas Community!

You can capture a link to a specific discussion reply by following these steps:

1. Search for the desired post in the discussion forum.

2. The filtered posts will have a "View in Discussion" link at the bottom which includes a permalink to that particular post.

3. Right-click and save the link from the "View in Discussion" link, or click on "View in Discussion" and copy the URL from the address bar.

4. Paste that saved link in your reply to the student.

And, further to the helpful advice from  @kona ‌ and Deactivated user‌, I'll add that if you're looking for a link to a specific post in the Canvas Community (Jive platform), you can click on the date and time of the post; that will yield a URL that goes directly to that post, and you can copy and paste the link from the address bar of your browser. Or, you can right-click on the date and time and select Copy Link Address from the dropdown.

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

Hi there, @GwendolynneBarr ...

You can use the following Guide to create a link on any text in your course to a Discussion topic (not a specific reply within the topic).

How do I create hyperlinks to course or group cont... - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

On the Guide, look for the section called "Select Course or Group Content".  You'll see that you can click on the arrow next to "Discussions", and all of your discussion topics will display.  Just choose the topic you want, and a link to that topic should be created for you.

I also tested Stefanie's steps (which were from 2017), and I do not see the area she refers to any longer.  So, this may have been removed, but I don't know for certain.  Stefanie has since retired, so we won't be hearing from her in the forums any longer.

Hope this helps a bit!

[kona]

richardhaggarty, there might be a way on the back-end of Canvas to figure out which discussion post/reply is which, but on the front end the most you can do is direct someone to the main discussion, there isn't a way to specify a specific post within the discussion.

[rconroy]

Hi there, richardhaggarty‌,

Just to clarify, are you referring to in the LMS specifically? Or in Jive? If you're referring to inside of Canvas, you may run into some permission issues if the course isn't public (I.E, they will get an error saying they aren't allowed to view the content). If you're referring to Jive, you most definitely can. Either by copying the URL link and pasting, which will generally auto populate the discussion name or by using this guide: https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-1317-how-do-i-mention-people-places-content 

Feel free to clarify and hopefully we can hone in on a better answer for you.  

[Stef_retired · Accepted solution]

richardhaggarty Welcome to the Canvas Community!

You can capture a link to a specific discussion reply by following these steps:

1. Search for the desired post in the discussion forum.

2. The filtered posts will have a "View in Discussion" link at the bottom which includes a permalink to that particular post.

3. Right-click and save the link from the "View in Discussion" link, or click on "View in Discussion" and copy the URL from the address bar.

4. Paste that saved link in your reply to the student.

And, further to the helpful advice from  @kona ‌ and Deactivated user‌, I'll add that if you're looking for a link to a specific post in the Canvas Community (Jive platform), you can click on the date and time of the post; that will yield a URL that goes directly to that post, and you can copy and paste the link from the address bar of your browser. Or, you can right-click on the date and time and select Copy Link Address from the dropdown.

[kona]

Wow! Super cool work around!

[richardhaggarty]

That will work!

Thanks very much.

[ProfessorBeyrer]

stefaniesanders Thank You for sharing those tips for both Canvas and Jive. Tonight I was in the situation where I wanted to refer to a classmate's post in the same discussion, searched the Canvas Community for an answer, and found this page. Awesome!

[hesspe]

We have made good use of this excellent hack in the past, but it appears not to work anymore.  When you copy the URL from the link and add it to the address bar or use it to create a new link, it always goes to the Topic post, not to the #reply.  If anyone has any ideas about something we might be doing wrong, or how to restore this functionality it would be appreciated.

[hesspe]

I put in a ticket on this and was told that the functionality of the "View in Discussion" link would be restored in the June, 2022 release.

[GwendolynneBarr]

This solution appears to be out-of-date as I see no "View in Discussion" link or any other option to grab a permalink to a specific post. Has this feature been removed? 

It seems that it should be possible, as you can go directly to a specific post from a notification email. But you can't grab the entry ID yourself for some reason. 

 

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

Hi there, @GwendolynneBarr ...

You can use the following Guide to create a link on any text in your course to a Discussion topic (not a specific reply within the topic).

How do I create hyperlinks to course or group cont... - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

On the Guide, look for the section called "Select Course or Group Content".  You'll see that you can click on the arrow next to "Discussions", and all of your discussion topics will display.  Just choose the topic you want, and a link to that topic should be created for you.

I also tested Stefanie's steps (which were from 2017), and I do not see the area she refers to any longer.  So, this may have been removed, but I don't know for certain.  Stefanie has since retired, so we won't be hearing from her in the forums any longer.

Hope this helps a bit!

[ddessauer · Accepted solution]

I frequently want to do exactly this.

The only method I have been able to find (that still works in 2023), is to have your notifications turned on for 'new reply' and use the link that you receive.

It will have a format like this:

https://institution.instructure.com/courses/77777/discussion_topics/888888?entry_id=9999999#entry-9999999

The blue part of the URL is easy to find if you just need to link to a specific discussion.

But the red text string contains the query parameters for the individual post (the id number) that is required to link directly to a particular comment within the discussion. I don't know of any other way of finding this (any more) other than these notification links.

To complicate this strategy, you don't get notified about your own posts, so if you want to link to something you said yourself, you will need an ally in the discussion who also has notifications turned on and is willing to forward the ID number to you!

I really hope I'm missing something here and someone can tell me the easier way!

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello @ddessauer ...

This is quite interesting.  Here in the Community, we can link to specific replies, but this doesn't appear to be a possibility any longer in Canvas course discussion topics.  I don't think it's an option, either, in the Discussions Redesign that Instructure has been working on.  At least, I could not find anything that indicated it was a feature when I enabled it in my own sandbox course.  There are a couple of options for you to consider:

• Submit a new Idea here in the Community by going to Canvas Ideas and Themes - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com) and then clicking on the blue "View and Submit Ideas" button.  From there, click on the blue "Submit an Idea" button.  I typically suggest that folks also look through the linked Guides under the heading "Ideas and Themes" found on this page: Instructure Community Guide - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)...as this information will tell you more about how to create an Idea and when those Ideas and Themes are open for voting.
• Another Canvas Coach, @chriscas, suggested maybe starting a new thread over in the Discussions/Announcements Redesign - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com) area here in the Community.

Hopefully these suggestions will be enough to get you started in continuing these conversations further.  Hope this helps a bit!

[chriscas]

Hi @ddessauer,

In addition to what @Chris_Hofer said about creating a feature idea for this (which I'd personally totally support), I did find a way to get the entry_id for a post from a web browser which you could plug into your url format to create a link.  

If you right click on a profile image (or really anywhere in a post, then select the "inspect" option, you'll see the behind-the-scenes code open up.

 In the code area, you can scroll up a few lines and eventually you'll see a line that looks like <li class="entry" id="entry-9999999">.  That's the id you can plug into your URL format.

Hope this may help in some way!

-Chris

[ddessauer]

Thanks to both Chrises!

I had peaked at the source to see if it was there and came back empty, but after getting this message I went back to dig around some more.

I can see that your method does work for the old discussion format. So anyone not yet using the discussion redesign can follow my method above with @chriscas advice to get the ID and I anticipate that solving the problem for them. 

Sadly for me, I recently switched to the Discussions Redesign and I can’t find any references to these IDs in those pages (but I’d love to be corrected if I have missed it).

Time permitting I will suggest the redesign includes a feature for linking to specific replies. 

[OlegMelnikov]

As 9/24/2024, we still have no ability to link to the individual posts in the Canvas Discussions. The older methods (including Chrome's Inspect) do not work in the redesigned Discussion. I could not find any ID that I could reference in the HTML code of the Discussion page. If you right click on any web page in Chrome and select "View page source", the complete and searchable HTML/CSS/scripting code is displayed. I searched for "entry", found 7 unrelated entries on Discussion page with 18 posts/replies.

Canvas support, please help.

[OlegMelnikov]

One workaround I just thought of: add a unique made up post ID to the post's text needed referencing (ex. POSTID1SEP24) and ask students to search for the post ID POSTID1SEP24 in the discussion thread given discussion's URL.

Notably, only instructors/TAs can edit everyone' posts, but I nearly always reference my own posts.