Observer Account Settings

[joanis]

Do you know if there is a setting in the Admin settings to turn off the option where Observers can "combine" student accounts when they are pairing them?  We just had a parent do this and WE were able to split them, but was hoping we could turn it off in our admin settings. We can't find a place to do that. 

[JeffCampbell]

Out of curiosity, what do you mean by "Combine" student accounts? Are they combining two different students into one account, trying to observe multiple students, or combining two email addresses for the same student?

[joanis]

Yes, the parent was able to combine her two students accounts into one account. The account had the one students picture (the son) with the daughters name, but both of their courses showed up on each of their dashboards. It was a mess until we figured out what happened, and it was an easy fix once we figured it out. But we were hoping there was a way to turn off that option for observers. 

[JeffCampbell · Accepted solution]

I cannot be certain that this will work, but talk with whomever has Admin level access to Canvas in your district. They will want to go to Account Settings for your institution. Then find some settings for Users - manage login details. There should be a feature option for Self Service User Merge that may need to be unchecked. This should remove the option for anyone to merge users without being an administrator.

Try that. The admin may have an option to simulate a user account to test. Or they may create an observer account and link it to some students, then see if the option to combine is still available.

Let me know if this does or does not work. If needed, we can try to get someone at the next level to look into it for you.