Sub-account-wide announcements to specific roles

[fran_harrison]

Hi all, relative newbie to Canvas here, after several years using other VLEs in various roles. 

I'm looking to replicate something I used a lot in Moodle: an announcements panel that can be locked onto everyone's dashboard so that on login they see the latest announcements that are relevant to them. I need this as opposed to the course announcements, as I need to communicate to all course learners across a subaccount.

I've seen the sub-account global announcements in Canvas Admin, but wondered if people were already doing this in other ways, and if so, how you're handling it? If you're using the global announcements, how do you find it / do you have any tips?

My aspiration is to have the announcements visible (e.g. latest 3 messages, or similar) when people log in, rather than relying on them not having deactivated their notifications for emailed-out announcements, or going in to actually view announcements.

[nwilson7]

Hello  @feh2901-online ‌, my current institution is also in the process of switching from Moodle to Canvas.  This is our transition year and we split the university in half for migration but are finding that 80% made the switch already because they are liking Canvas.  

We are using the announcements just like you present to replace the global announcement box from Moodle.  Everything seems to be working very well but the one difference is that faculty can dismiss an announcement (hopefully after reading it) so it does not always show.  This has not been an issue yet as it seems they only dismiss it after reading it or acting on what we asked them to do in the announcement.  For example, right now we have a survey up asking for feedback on the first half of the LMS transition.  

- Hope that helps!

[fran_harrison]

Hi Nick, yes it does - thanks! Interesting to know about visibility after dismissing, as that was one of my queries on that as an option. Also, does it email out, or just sit on dashboards? I've had conflicting feedback on that element. 

[nwilson7]

My understanding, and so far experience has been that the Global announcements are NOT emailed but do show at the top of the dashboard when a user logs in.  Course announcements do get emailed but only show when you are in the course or by going to the announcements tab within the course.  So, that is probably where the difference in answers comes from, course vs global.

[fran_harrison]

That's good - that solves any issues with over-communication to users, and it's the active ones that we'd want to reach. I may DM you if that's OK, so that we can share how-to's in future. There are several things Moodle that I used to do in my previous institution, that I may look to replicate here.

Thanks very much for your help.

[nwilson7]

Awesome!  Feel free to reach out anytime, happy to help however I can!