Feature Q&A: Canvas Deploy Notes (2024-07-03)

[InstContentTeam]

Looking to discuss these features from the 2024-07-03 Deploy Notes? Post a reply and start a conversation!

Interface Updates

• Announcements: Mark All As Read Button
• Announcements: Notifications for Changed Content [Delayed until 2024-07-20]
• Announcements: Availability Dates
• Assignments: Submission Type Interface Update [Added 2020-07-02]
• Courses: Status Icon Update
• Gradebook: Message Students Who Total Grade Update
• Inbox: Pronouns Display
• Login: Help Menu Update

LTI Updates

• LTI: Icon Sizes

Other Updates

• Files: Course File Quota

Change Log Updates

• Discussion/Announcements Redesign

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• Please thread replies as possible to keep posts organized. This will help everyone to track discussions and to participate.

ADDITIONAL FEEDBACK—WHERE TO POST IDEA SUGGESTIONS AND SUBMIT BUG REPORTS

• Idea requests for the Product Team to consider should be submitted in ideas.canvaslms.com . This is the best way to ask for additional or alternative functionality than what is included in the release. Linking to the related idea here so others can find it is encouraged!
• Bug reports should be submitted to Canvas Support. This way, cases can be connected and uniform updates can be provided to those involved. Bugs will not be triaged in this thread

[JamesSekcienski]

It looks like there may be a typo for the Status Icon Update.  It indicates that the icon for the 'concluded' and 'unpublished' are the same icon [3], but none of them reference the first icon [1].  

In addition, for consistency with the icon that is used for the button in course settings to conclude a course and to differentiate the checkmark icons more, it would be nice if the concluded icon was the lock icon.

[kailey]

Notifications for Changed Content & Availability Dates

When manually removing a previously set date and time from the available fields (not using the reset button) and clicking Save, the Notify Users pop-up comes up. However, selecting either Send or Save & Don't Send results in an error in the background, preventing the user from saving the announcement. The error in the back mentions there's an error updating the 'Discussion' rather than 'Announcement' which is misleading to users. If the expected behavior is for users to use the Reset buttons, they shouldn't be taken through the other steps. They should be prompted to use the Reset buttons.

The screenshot in the Availability Dates section of the deploy does not match that of what I see in Beta. 

Also, the Announcements edit page has been changed drastically to where there are many mentions of 'Discussion' rather than 'Announcement'. There's also some discrepancy since it mentions 'Students' at times and 'Participants' at other times. The page should be consistent.

[kailey]

Update: Instructure is looking into the issues around removing a previously set date and time issue and the error message referring to Discussions, rather than Announcements. 

Instructure also will not be deploying all the changes that appear in Beta (Announcement edit page updates) until 7/20 so that they can address the multiple references to Discussions.

[DeteesWuber]

1) Visibility of announcements on the course start page
The visibility of announcements works within the announcements, but does not apply to announcements that have been placed on the course home page (setting: "Show recent announcements on Course home page"). Even if an announcement has expired and is no longer visible to students in the "Announcements" section, it is still visible and clickable on the home page. (See screenshots below). This makes it difficult for lecturers, as they always have to check whether the expired announcement is still visible on the start page. The same applies to the display in the To Do list. It would be desirable if expired announcements were no longer visible anywhere.

2) Visual marking of expired announcements
As an instructor, you can see ALL announcements, even the expired ones that are no longer visible to students. It would be nice if these announcements had a visual label for the teacher so that it is clear at a glance that these announcements are no longer visible to students.

[mbmacdonald]

I think I must have missed this deploy when it was released - or else I skimmed it and did not pay close attention. I did not realize "Assignments: Submission Type Interface Update" was about Lucid - so I was surprised a few weeks later when I saw "Lucid" listed as a submission type.

1. When this change was made, was Lucid also removed from the list of external tools? (So that if you pick "External Tool" for the submission type, you can't then pick Lucid from that list). If so, where was that announced? I have been trying to add this feature back in manually, but haven't been successful yet.

2. I do not think this is a good idea. Lucid is not a "submission type" - it is an external tool. Conceptually, this doesn't make sense, even if it reduces the number of clicks. I believe my users are going to be confused and the ones that do actually want to use Lucid are probably going to look in the list of external tools. Never mind the fact that the documentation put out by Instructure already had mention of the external tools list.

I understand I can disable the submission type option, but I don't want to do that until it is back in the list of external tools.