Two Inbox questions re: notifications and formatting

[S_Abbot]

Instructor here.

First, the easy one: is there really NO way to style Inbox messages? Really? 

Second: Canvas has stopped sending email notifications when a student uses the Inbox to contact me. I’m not sure if this just happened or if it’s been true for the whole semester, but I WAS receiving notifications last semester. I haven’t made any changes myself.

After a search here, I DID discover where the notification settings are. So, “Conversations” (why that’s not called “Inbox messages” I’ll never know) has three lines: Added To Conversation (Tooltip: You are added to a conversation), Conversation Message (New Inbox* messages), and Conversations Created By Me (You created a conversation). The first two were set to “Notify Immediately” and the last one to “Notifications off.”

FWIW, Push notifications are off for everything — but that was always the case.

By those settings it looks like I SHOULD be getting emails when a message from a student hits my Inbox; anyone have any ideas why it might not be happening?

For the record, I’m using an up-to-date version of Chrome: 110.0.5481.100 (Official Build) (arm64).

Thanks in advance!

__________________________________________________________________________________

*This tooltip is the only place that the Inbox is mentioned, and it’s NOT intuitive that “Conversations” means “Inbox” — took me longer than I’d care to admit to figure that out.

[Chris_Hofer]

Good morning, @S_Abbot ...

---

First, the easy one: is there really NO way to style Inbox messages? Really?

---

Yes, this is correct.  I know there has been a lot of conversation about wanting the Canvas Inbox to have some basic formatting (such as bold, italics, underlining, etc.), but nothing has been added to Canvas.  I do know that this Idea and Theme (formerly Feature Idea) that exists which you can find at:

You'll notice there is a link to add the Rich Content Editor (RCE) to Conversations (currently last link under the heading "Referenced Ideas").  You can learn more about the new Ideas and Themes space here:

• New Ideas & Themes Now Live
• New Idea Submission Available

Second: Canvas has stopped sending email notifications when a student uses the Inbox to contact me. I’m not sure if this just happened or if it’s been true for the whole semester, but I WAS receiving notifications last semester. I haven’t made any changes myself.

After a search here, I DID discover where the notification settings are. So, “Conversations” (why that’s not called “Inbox messages” I’ll never know) has three lines: Added To Conversation (Tooltip: You are added to a conversation), Conversation Message (New Inbox* messages), and Conversations Created By Me (You created a conversation). The first two were set to “Notify Immediately” and the last one to “Notifications off.”

FWIW, Push notifications are off for everything — but that was always the case.

By those settings it looks like I SHOULD be getting emails when a message from a student hits my Inbox; anyone have any ideas why it might not be happening?

For the record, I’m using an up-to-date version of Chrome: 110.0.5481.100 (Official Build) (arm64).

Thanks in advance!

__________________________________________________________________________________

*This tooltip is the only place that the Inbox is mentioned, and it’s NOT intuitive that “Conversations” means “Inbox” — took me longer than I’d care to admit to figure that out.

---

Are you ensuring that you have configured both your Canvas account notifications *and* your individual course notifications?  You can set notifications for both...so that *might* be the issue.

• How do I manage my Canvas notification settings as an instructor?
• How do I manage notifications for a single course as an instructor?

Hopefully this information will be of some help to you.  Please keep us posted here in the Community...thanks!

[S_Abbot]

Hi again Chris — apologies for this double-post; THIS post originally indicated that it was flagged as spam, which is why I posted the other one. For the record, my course-level notifications are also on (although it should be noted that there’s no specific “Conversations” section at the course level notification settings) — which means it’s more likely something at my institution as you indicated in my other post. Thanks again!