Imported announcements from Blackboard are all viewable :-(

[PeggyR]

After importing course content from Blackboard into Canvas, all of the announcements, most of which were not visible to students in Blackboard (waiting to be activated on different dates during the semester) are all now visible to students in Canvas. How can I fix that without individually changing the due date on every single announcement? Isn't there a way to make them all unavailable at once? I saw that the ability to bulk edit announcements was discussed as a major need somewhere else on this site, but I couldn't figure out how to comment there. Why hasn't this improvement been made yet? (New potential Canvas user here).

[jerry_nguyen]

@PeggyR 

Although the ability to bulk edit announcements is not yet available directly in Canvas UI, you can utilise the Canvas API (particularly this endpoint) to achieve this.

You can write a script to pull a list of all announcements for a course, then send a "PUT" API call to each announcement to set the delayed_post_at date. The easiest way to write this script is using a spreadsheet program, such as VBA through Excel or App Script through Google Sheets. I understand this is quite technical, but it's achievable. Feel free to reach out if you need help with the script, I'm happy to assist you further.

[PeggyR]

Thank you for your reply and your generous offer of further assistance. However, I have no knowledge of programming and I'm afraid I wouldn't understand any instructions you would provide. Also, our institution is currently just evaluating Canvas for possible adoption, so I don't want to put any additional burden on our technical staff yet.

[paul_fynn]

Hi @PeggyR 

This sounds like a variation of the problem that we have when importing content between Canvas courses a) everything is published and b) it is published to 'Everyone' rather than specific sections. I'm hoping this may make it onto the Roadmap as a tidying up issue.

There is an idea for bulk edit of announcements currently in Ideas and Themes.

I'm not a programmer (and our IT team wouldn't allow local scripts anyway) so couldn't deploy @jerry_nguyen's pragmatic solution.

Bulk upload from alternative LMS's and between Canvas courses really does needs to reflect the needs of the larger number of naive users who need a Turnkey/Plug and Play Canvas environment.

[PeggyR]

For the time being, to avoid this happening in a future import, would it be best for me to go to the announcements in my source LMS (Blackboard) course, and set the dates of all of the announcements to some date far in the future, before importing to Canvas?

[SG19716]

I also have this problem when importing announcements between Canvas courses. Not only are the announcements automatically live, but they do not appear to authored by the instructor. Even going in and editing each announcement (and the date it should post) does not change the author to the instructor of the course (which is the same as the instructor of the course it was imported from). It just has a "U" instead of the instructor picture -- and I can't figure out how to change it.  It seems the only way to have an announcement show as being from the instructor is by creating it new in the course -- which defeats the purpose of an import.  Any ideas on how to fix this (without programming)?

[PeggyR]

I agree. I don't think non-techie users like me should need to perform complex programming tasks in order to make this work as it should.

[JasonSimmons · Accepted solution]

Hello Peggy,

Are you familiar with K16 Solutions? We're a close partner with Instructure and handle the vast majority of their customers' LMS migration projects. We offer an automated migration service that eliminates the manual process of moving courses one by one (and solves the issue you're describing). We also provide an archiving solution so you can archive your legacy course content and student data on our archiving platform that fully integrates with Canvas LMS. 

Below are just a few Blackboard to Canvas case studies. If you have any questions about our LMS migration or archiving services, I would be happy to connect you with someone from our team for a demo/consultation. I can also connect you with former migration customers of ours.

• Saint Mary's University of Minnesota - Blackboard to Canvas LMS Migration
• Prince George's Community College - Blackboard to Canvas LMS Migration
• Goodwin University - Blackboard to Canvas LMS Migration

Thanks so much.

Jason Simmons,
SVP, K16 Solutions

[PeggyR]

Thanks, Jason. I'll pass this information along to those in charge if we do make the decision to move to Canvas.