[ARCHIVED] What admin features would you like to see?

[hollands]

I'm sure there are a ton of feature requests out there, but I was just curious what sort of options people were looking for in terms of enhancements to the admin interface. Speaking with my account manager I did mention that it seems like it's been a very long time since we've had any admin love in terms of updates and features. Obviously Canvas is super student centered which is why we chose to go with it in the first place but still it would be nice to get a couple of enhancements.

My top 3

1. Paganation on the Course lists - I'm pretty sure everyone has run into this where you are basically forced to search for a course since most schools have more than 267 or whatever the limit is. Users has pages why can't courses?

2. Show deleted courses option - If we need to restore a course we need the Canvas ID, which is a number only Canvas uses and we often don't track/have it. It would be awesome to see a list of deleted courses with a click to bring them back. It's a rare occurrance but we have had to restore courses and it is not the shortest task.

3. More variety for permissions - Often we have to go through permissions via trial and error to get a custom role the way we want. I think a balance could be struck between having too many and not enough.

Maybe we can get a list of feature requests going here so we can browse and vote up!

[kona]

 @hollands ​ - great idea!

My top 3 (in no specific order)

1. More efficient way to search for courses and people. Ex: An instructor says they're having problems with their English course - great, which one?  Option 1 - Search for the instructor and then scroll through every course they've taught using Canvas trying to figure out which one is from this semester. Option 2 - If I try looking it up by course then I get a list of EVERY English course ever and then have to do an extra click to get those just from this semester and then still have to scroll through looking for the specific instructor. Overall I waste a ridiculous amount of time every day trying to find specific courses or people. There is already a feature request for this - - so once it's ready to be voted on please go vote for this!

2. Permissions. Permissions. Permissions. I would love to have a list of all the permissions, exactly what they control/impact, and other permissions that they are tied to. In way too many cases you check a box and not just that permission changes, but many others that you didn't want to change. OR, you check the box and it doesn't work because you needed to have another box checked (or unchecked) for that permission to work. I'd also love more granular permissions. It drives me a little crazy when I'm trying to give a certain role a specific permission, but I can't because it's tied with another permission the person can't/shouldn't have.

3. Reports. I'd love to have more variety with the admin reports. Yes I know you can get pretty much everything through API calls, which we do a lot of, but for your average admin user (one one without a dedicated IT staff) it would be great to be able to define a few variables, click a button, and get the data! Poof. Magic. dream​

[hollands]

Yeah the permissions thing is getting somewhat problematic. I also hate how if you create a new role off of an existing one it still treats the new role like the old. At my former institution we had organizations (which were courses but for non academic needs) and we wanted to create custom roles since people in them were not students and teachers. All of the course invites to out as "teacher" or "student" even after we changed the role. Most people did't mind but I was surprised at how many faculty were upset.

[bbelew]

Reports -- which it looks like they are addressing.  I'd like to be able to pull reports on every bit of data in our instance.  To me the biggest one is a grade passback log - the ability to see what grades are being pushed to our SIS and error messages when that sync fails.

UI -- Overall UI of the admin portion.  For example maybe split "managed accounts" out into a new tab so you don't have to go to courses > managed accounts to get to them.  Also as others have mentioned - pagination.   Maybe with sortable searchable tables ( example: https://www.datatables.net/  ).     Right now the course listing has so much wasted space - tables would make it cleaner.  I'd also like to see the users list in a sortable searchable table with more information than name.  Maybe even with a configurable view by admin user.  So if I wanted to see  Last, First, Email, Grade Level I could.    Also when viewing a user I would rather see a truncated click to expand list of enrollments over a scrolling div - scrolling div's to me feel kinda old and outdated, like iFrames.

[scottdennis]

Hey Brandon,

I hope that Canvas Studio: Hosted data service​ will go a long way towards letting you get at every bit of data in your instance.

[bbelew]

Here is my comment in the administrator idea thread Kona listed:   https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/1126#comment-3592

[Chris_Hofer]

That's pretty awesome,  @bbelew ​!  I would maybe want to see one more column, the Username/UserID of the person.

[kona]

This would be great - actually looks like what our previous LMS had, which we liked - except I'd remove grade level (doesn't matter for us) and insert username/netid and ID#.

[bbelew]

Best way to have it would be configurable by the user.   Have a default setting and then allow each person to change the columns to what they want to see.    Maybe even with a custom field or two added as well.

[Chris_Hofer]

Grade doesn't matter for us, either.  It could be replaced with the User ID.

[lars_vemund_sol]

Great suggestion, but i really miss the option to toggle a number of users (and courses in the course list) and perform tasks on them. Delete, contact, export etc. (on courses: delete, complete, move account belonging, move term, publish, unpublish etc) 

[buellj]

Permissions yes!!! The previous system I administered was a lot better about both documenting permissions and having more granularity about them. For example, not bundling view with edit permissions.

[Chris_Hofer]

I agree with  @kona ​ on reports.  I wish we had more reporting features.  Within the past year, our Technical College has transitioned from Pearson eCollege's LearningStudio LMS to Canvas.  In LearningStudio, we had something called "Enterprise Reporting".  The tools that we had in "ER" were awesome.  I could create my own reports based on all kinds of different data.  I could pick and choose what data I wanted and create my own spreadsheets.  I've included a screen shot to show just a small sample of the kinds of data we could get from LearningStudio.

Other things I'd like to see added for Admins:

• (my own idea)
• (my own idea)
• (my own idea)

[hollands]

 @Chris_Hofer ​ yeah reports is definitely something I'd like to see. I did hear that Instructure might be opening up some access to the back end of your instance but I don't know much about it. I made the mistake of saying we weren't interested in beta-ing it (mostly too busy).

I also think it would be awesome to see some Analytics/stats love especially at the account level. Grade breakdowns are probably great for sub accounts but sometimes I'd love to see a pie chart of the courses that use the most space, or have the most uploaded content. Having page views is great but what about average time spent in an area?

[Chris_Hofer]

That information would be helpful, too.  I could post more screen shots of our "ER" screens in LearningStudio, but my postings would get pretty long.  I'm going to miss that part of LearningStudio when we no longer have access to it later this year.  I would run reports every once in a while and then blog about them...so we could provide some interesting data to our faculty about the first week of the semester.

[scottdennis]

I am so glad that you-all can finally have conversations that are sort of back channel and separate from feature suggestions - a place for everything and everything hopefully in its place.

[Chris_Hofer]

Thanks to  @hollands ​ for starting the discussion!!!

[Allison_Ogrady]

I also transitioned from Enterprise Reporting to the Canvas reports and feel like we lost a lot of steam in terms of the data that we wanted to access to inform our decisions. Based on my first viewing of canvas data, it still doesn't look like it compares to Enterprise Reporting.

[leward]

• Easier account navigation - I would like to see a search interface with autocomplete for navigating to subaccounts.  Also, we have admins in subaccounts with a subset of admin rights. Even though they have permission to access child nodes, the subaccounts menu does not display in the node to which they are assigned, so they have no way to get to child subaccounts. 
• Sticky header column in Permissions screen - the list of roles disappears as you scroll down through course and account roles permissions screen.  We have added several roles to both screens and it's hard to know which role you are changing when you adjust permissions.

I'm in full agreement that we need better reporting and the need for more granular and better documented permissions.

[canvas_admin]

 @hollands ​, your top 3 are my top 3 as well.   The pagination on course lists needs to work on sub-accounts as well. 

[Cindy_Masek]

1. Pagination  of courses - yes please!  I feel like I can never get a good picture of what all courses are in system!

2. Scroll bar at the bottom of roles.  We have many roles created, but if you need to see the roles on the far right you have to decrease the magnification to see them and they are getting so small I can't read them any more!

3.  Ability to print all of grading comments, rubric and submissions easily.  While not strictly an admin tool, it has great impact on admins!  If there is a controversy where documentation is required it isn't uncommon to have to print 100's of pages of screen shots to capture what the student wrote/responded and what the teacher's grading comments on a submission, the rubric, the rubric comments, etc.  And after this effort it isn't a pretty product.  Similarly it is an issue when faculty need to produce things for their portfolios or when academic administrators request documentation of faculty interactions.  I realize this is via a 3rd party tool, but if there was a way to capture the content as a single pdf or some other downloadable or printable product this would be of great help to me as an admin.

[Cindy_Masek]

I just learned on another discussion that there is a reasonable way to print things. It seems so obvious now that I feel quite silly!  In case you are in the same state of oblivion that I was here is the link that gave me the answer: https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-3135   I just wasn't looking for it as a student issue!

[sethgurell]

I would like to see more robust search (Jive isn't a bad example). The current search by user and search by course are very picky and will return limited results unless you get close in your query.

It would also be helpful to see more information about individual users when doing search by user. Currently it only shows the display name. I've had cases where I'm searching for a faculty member with a common name and I have to open up five or six browser tabs to find out which one is the instructor. It would be nice if additional details were added to the right of the name or information was provided as a "card" on mouse-over.

[eellis]

I agree! I would like to see at least the SIS ID or login/username for the user. This will make it very easy for me to pick out whether that result is parent, student or staff.

[rory_obrien1]

Yep, pagination in course lists seems like such a simple feature to be missing.

[snugent]

 @hollands ​ I added a couple of feature ideas yesterday. I agree with you on the items you listed as well.

[kona]

I'm not sure if you saw this or not, but there's a Advanced Aministrator Search & Sort request all ready out there and I think that might cover the Sorting Users in the Admin Interface.

[Robbie_Grant]

Here is what I had sent back in 2012 regarding admin needs:

GUI Admin Needs

Querying (1)

Courses

By name (list the course before going into it)

For cross listed courses

By Course ID

By enrollments (or lack of)

By course size (greater than, less than, equal to a size in MB)

Published Status

SIS ID

Users

            Temporary accounts (accounts that only have an email address)

            Wild Card querying

Sub-accounts (2)

Need to be alphabetized

Need to be able to reorder

Collapse sub-accounts (default)

Set as Default entry screen

Add find a course (along with the Find a User)

Keep collapsed based on last visit

List number of courses and sub accounts below the Main Sub Account(s)

Bulk delete of courses from the GUI (3)

More granular control over the Settings page in a course

Paging preferences for courses (similar to what exists for Users)

When a course is created, be able to enroll user at the same time

Additional Settings

• Course Details
  • Prevent Teachers from changing names on SIS created courses only (at sub account level)
• Self enrollment by sub-account

Robbie

[awilliams]

I see a common 3 emerging:

Permissions - I'll start off by adding my support of more granular permission options. I have had a difficult time setting up roles for Deans, Deans Assistants, Financial Aid staff, etc. There are good reasons for allowing these types of staff access to Canvas rather than having them run all their requests through me, but giving them the right amount of access (just enough, but not too much), is hard.

Reports - Agreed, but as already stated there is a solution coming for this, and many things can already be accomplished through the API.

But let's get to what seems to be the "big one."

Search - Search is an admin's best friend or worst enemy. It's probably the most common task I do in Canvas because it is the starting point for so many other tasks.

There are lots of good ideas already around for ways to make search better (I'll tag mine here: ), but really, anything that can be done to make search easier, faster, more thorough, cover more content, is going to make us admins better at our job. I feel like search could be branched off into a separate thread where we all kick around ideas. I thought about posting some specific examples of what I wanted to see from search and commenting on others specific ideas, but decided to refrain so this post wouldn't be a novel. Put shortly though, I want to be able to search all the things from anywhere I happen to be in Canvas. I eagerly look forward to a thorough discussion on ways to enhance search.

[Chris_Hofer]

Another idea I just had...  Although this doesn't happen a lot, it does happen from time to time...where we need to manually enroll someone in multiple (let's just say 5+ courses for the time being) courses.  While I could certainly just log in to each course and manually add the user...or I could create a CSV file to upload via the SIS Import menu, it would also be nice to search for a specific user in the Admin Pages of Canvas, select the term I'm looking for, and then further select the courses in that term I want the user to be enrolled in (specifying the kind of access he/she needs as well).

We could do something similar to that in our previous LMS, Pearson eCollege's LearningStudio.  Here's a screen shot where I've already selected one of my own accounts, selected the term I wanted, and now I can use the check boxes to select as many courses as I want to enroll myself in.  Very quick and easy to do from the Administrative Pages of LearningStudio.

[John_Lowe]

Bulk Deletes for manually enrolled users.

We have a really weird situation where one department likes to add hundreds of users into Canvas manually.  Through the +People screens, you can copy/paste in hundreds of email addresses just fine.  But then when they decide they don't need them in there anymore, they call on their friendly Canvas Admin to try to remove them.  Since they weren't added via SIS Import, they can't easily be remove via SIS Import.  Removing them from the GUI is a person-by-person process.  Admins need to at the very least have check-boxes on the People screen where we can do certain actions like removing users from a course en masse.

[mfranz]

I would love to see breaking out of some of the permissions as well. Particularly the ability to add/delete/edit courses. We want to lock that feature down and manage it through SIS or via root admin but in order to remove sub account admin ability we'd have to turn off their ability to add/delete while still allowing the permission to edit.

It would also be great to have an inactive user status so that we can restrict access to Canvas without deleting users and all of their interactions.

[Chris_Hofer]

 @mfranz ​, re: the "inactive user" status...have you seen this feature idea that's going to be open for voting? 

[egronikowski]

Just voted for this. 

[ssimpso4]

An example of a 'smart permission' would include breaking up the Discussions functions.  Right now, they're all under two permissions - Moderate discussions ( delete / edit other's posts, lock topics) and Post to discussions.  So, if I want designers to be able to build discussions (but not participate or manage active discussions), there's no option for providing this specific need for a certain role.

[jthoms]

Allow additional authentication methods and URLs at the sub-account level. While one SSO works in the majority of cases, there are often needs for users outside the institution where another SSO option or URL (without /login?canvas_login=1) would be useful. as the alternative is another instance of Canvas.

[scottdennis]

The first round of Canvas Feature Ideas​ voting kicks off Tuesday morning.  I'd love to see some of the ideas that are posted here, but not there, make their way over to become submissions.

[kona]

I just added two feature requests based on our conversation - ​ & ​ - hopefully they'll make the cut for voting and if they do please go vote for them! 🙂

[sriddle]

1) It would be soooooo helpful to have checkboxes for bulk delete of courses, users, and enrollments in manually created courses.

2) Sorting options are needed for courses - by instructor, by creation date

3) Filters or reports for users with no enrollment.....

[egronikowski]

I would like to be able to change a user's role without completely removing the person from the course/group.