Canvas Beta Release Notes (2015-08-17)

erinhmcmillan
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

In this beta release, Canvas has updates for the Course Home Page and Groups. We also have updates for platform/integrations and other Canvas features. View the beta release notes and let us know your thoughts!

The beta environment is for testing new and updated features, which are subject to change based on user feedback and testing. Learn more about Canvas Beta.

  Updated Features

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Course Home Page

Published Link

In new Canvas courses, the top of the Course Home Page no longer includes a link to publish the course. The message about publishing the course is the same, but it no longer includes a direct link to publish the course. If users have permission to publish their courses, users can publish via the Course Home Page sidebar or open the Course Setup Checklist.

Course-Home-Page-Publish-Link.png

This change resolves a fixed bug in Canvas:


Explanation: When a user with permission to publish a course viewed a new course, the top of the Course Home Page included a message explaining that only instructors could see the course until it was published. The word published included a link that was supposed to publish the course but did not generate any result when clicked. This behavior occurred because the link was not properly routed to publish the page. Additionally, instructors were confused about the purpose of the link and some tried to publish the course inadvertently. Canvas code has been updated to remove the publish link at the top of the Course Home Page.

Groups

Clone Group Set

After assigning a group to an assignment, instructors will receive a warning message if they try to modify a group set that has student submissions. Instructors can choose to modify the group, or they can clone the existing group set.

Group-Set-Change-Warning.png

Cloning a group set will copy the entire group set, including all groups, group leaders, and memberships; instructors only have to make changes to the affected users. Instructors can also create a new name to differentiate the cloned group set.


Group sets can be cloned at any time in the Settings menu for the group set.

Group-Set-Clone.png

This change resolves a fixed bug in Canvas:


Explanation: When an instructor created a group assignment and then tried to change the group membership after receiving student submissions, Canvas was not able to accurately assign grades to each student group. This behavior occurred because group sets are how Canvas manages all grades for a group, and moving a student causes grading confusion between groups. Canvas code has been updated to warn instructors when changing group membership after a group set has received assignment submissions and allow the instructor to clone a group set.

  Platform/Integration Updates

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APIs

Accounts API

When creating a new sub-account in the Accounts API, users can set the SIS account ID.

Discussion Topics API

When creating or updating discussions in the Discussion Topics API, pinned discussions are included as a parameter.

Notifications API

In the Notifications API, users can get a list of preference categories and update preferences by category.

Quiz Question Group API

In the Quiz Question Group API, users can get the properties of a single Quiz Question Group.

External Tools (LTI)

Account-Level App Placement

In Course Settings, instructors can view the placement of LTI tools installed at the account level. In the Apps tab, viewing app configurations displays an information button next to locked tools, which shows the placement of each tool.

LTI-Tools-Account-Level.png

Grade Passback

LTI tools that support grade passback correctly handle complete/incomplete assignment types. A score of 1.0 will be marked as complete and anything less than 1.0 will be marked incomplete.

  Other Canvas Updates

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Course Imports

User Roles

When users copy or export a Canvas course, the course retains the user role of the user and any custom permissions. This change helps the user see only relevant course content according to role and helps set a foundation for future improvements to the Course Import Tool.

Rich Content Editor

Element Path

Beneath the Rich Content Editor window, the view of the HTML element path has been removed. This change was made to ease confusion as to the path's meaning for the majority of Canvas users and clean up the page design.

RCE-HTML-elements.png

User Settings

Time Zones

Canvas has made improvements for more accurate time display in varied browser and profile time zones. Even if a user's computer browser and Canvas profile are set in different time zones, Canvas will honor the profile time zone in a user’s account settings.

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