Is it possible to run a grade export from the Canvas Beta site?

[rpsimon]

Merry Christmas!  I made a change in the Beta site and I want to run a Grade Export to see the effects.  I ran the Grade Export and while it looks like it went through, I am not receiving it.  Is it actually possible to run the Grade Export in beta mode?  Thanks.  

[dbrace · Accepted solution]

Hello @rpsimon,

You should be able to run reports from beta (there should not be a difference for the grade report) and the results should contain data that is specific to beta but you will not receive an email notification when the report has finished being generated and you would need to return to the "Settings > Reports" area of the (sub)account in order to download it.

If you are not seeing a report available to download in that area, you should report a problem to Canvas Support.

-Doug

[dbrace · Accepted solution]

Hello @rpsimon,

You should be able to run reports from beta (there should not be a difference for the grade report) and the results should contain data that is specific to beta but you will not receive an email notification when the report has finished being generated and you would need to return to the "Settings > Reports" area of the (sub)account in order to download it.

If you are not seeing a report available to download in that area, you should report a problem to Canvas Support.

-Doug

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @rpsimon,

I agree with everything @dbrace stated.  Just wanted to add that compared to Production Canvas, the Beta instance is a lot slower so you may have to wait longer than you expect for the report to become available.  A report that finished in 10 minutes in Production might take an hour on Beta (but could be faster, just depending on how busy the Beta environment is at the time).

-Chris

[rpsimon]

Thanks @chriscas I actually went to the reports section and saw that my export was there - it just took much longer than a report takes to process than in production.  Thank you!

[rpsimon]

Thank you both.  What about using the Test instance instead of Beta? While beta would refresh weekly (every Saturday I believe), the test instance will only reset monthly.   

[dbrace]

You are welcome @rpsimon.

You can also use test but, depending on the timing, the data would not be as current.

The two primary advantages to test are: (1) an additional area to experiment with and (2) the changes made in test, depending on the timing, have the ability to last longer because it is not refreshed as often.

For anyone else that comes across this, I would encourage reviewing the links below:

• from July 2023: Announcing a Change to the Monthly Test Release Schedule for Canvas LMS - Instructure Community - 57...
• from August 2023: Differences between Production & Beta Environments - Instructure Community - 576926
• What is the Canvas release schedule for beta, production, and test environments? - Instructure Commu...
• What is the Canvas beta environment? - Instructure Community - 255260
• What is the Canvas test environment? - Instructure Community - 262267

-Doug

[chriscas]

Hi @rpsimon ,

In terms of run time for reports, you're likely to find that Test will not perform any better than Beta, and could be even slower.  There are some unknown variables at play, like is someone else on the same AWS cluster as you running a lot of reports or sis imports on Beta, which would slow down your report generation but not doing the same on Test.  As far as I know, Test is the least supported environment at this point, and new customers don't even get a Test instance anymore (just Production and Beta).

Can you share why you're attempting to run reports in the non-production environment to begin with?  There are some one-off scenarios where I know that could be useful, but if you're building some kind of regular business process there might be a different approach you could take to try to work in Production.  Let us know if you're able to!

-Chris

[jsowalsk]

@rpsimon On beta, you do not receive notifications so this could be why you did not receive it.