[ARCHIVED] Is it possible to hide native (not external tools) course navigation links by default? eg. the Files menu link.

[leon_huang]

We want to make some navigation links hidden by default when the course is created. Not external LTI's - as we can do that by XML. An example is the Files link we want to hide it by default. Any ideas?

[phanley · Accepted solution]

You can do it with the Tabs API, and the id of the default tabs looks consistent (i.e. you get the files tab with  `/courses/{course_id}/tabs/files`)

So you can do the update in one step (per class):

curl -X PUT  "https://{canvas_url}/api/v1/courses/{course_id}/tabs/files" -F "hidden=true"  -H "Authorization: Bearer {SUPERSECRET}"  | jq --raw-output

which for the course I tested it with returned: 

{
  "id": "files",
  "html_url": "/courses/28241/files",
  "full_url": "https://templeu.instructure.com/courses/28241/files",
  "position": 4,
  "hidden": true,
  "visibility": "admins",
  "label": "Files",
  "type": "internal"
}

It seems worth pointing out -- I'm pretty sure that that the link will just greyed out for Teachers, not invisible  (alas, I tried  -F "enabled=false" and  -F "visibility=false" just to see, but they didn't have any effect -- I'm guessing that disabling the tool would break the course files functionality, not just hide the link entirely).

[pklove]

The docs have a visibility of "none" - but, like trying false, it doesn't have any affect - the visibility stays as "admins".

Tried on Syllabus and its the same.

So you can hide it from students, but not teachers.  For teachers its greyed out.

[leon_huang]

Hi Peter, maybe something we can think about when site is created in seams?

[natalie_norton1]

Thanks  @phanley ‌ - do you happen to know if students can still see the files tab in the app if you hide it that way? Thank you! 

[pklove]

It disappears for students.  And is greyed out for teachers.

[rconroy]

Hi,  @leon_huang a belated Welcome to the Community!

This is definitely an option.  Much like the LTI's, you can do the same thing to native links as well. Check out the https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-12933-415257079 guide for more info. For this to be something that is done by default, you may want to employ the use of Master Shells or take a look into Blueprint Courses. A great one to get started with is  @kblack 's blog, https://community.canvaslms.com/groups/higher-ed/blog/2017/08/05/designing-maintaining-and-perhaps-r...‌. 

Hope this helps! Please feel free to let us know if we can expand the answers to your questions or if you have any others.  

[leon_huang]

Thanks all for your responses. very helpful.