Features Q&A: Canvas Deploy Notes (2025-04-09)

[InstContentTeam]

Looking to discuss these features from the 2025-04-09 Deploy Notes? Post a reply and start a conversation!

Updated Features

• Discussions: Expanded Availability of Discussion Checkpoints
• New Quizzes: Student Analysis Report CSV Update
• Sub-Accounts: Updates to Sub-account Creation and Editing

Other Updates

• Accessibility Updates: Enhanced Structural Clarity
• Accessibility Updates: Improved Error Feedback
• Developer Keys: Improved Handling of External Tools

ADD FEEDBACK FOR THESE FEATURES IN Q&A TOPIC

• This topic is for feature discussion only—Please share use cases, best practices, questions, clarifications, etc. regarding this feature.
• 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

[ellen_peters]

On the beta environment I see that the subaccounts are no longer listed in alphabetical order. Instead, they are sorted by account id (I have checked this in both Firefox and Chrome). In my opinion this is a deterioration. Is this an intended change of the updates to subaccount creation and editing? I have created a support ticket but support told me to ask the question here.

[chriscas]

Seeing the same here.  Sub-accounts are not alphabetically ordered anymore, and the list no longer included the sis_id and account_id of each subaccount.  The notes only call out changes to creating sub-accounts, but clearly there have been more changes than that.  Each one of these things is a deterioration in my mind, and I hope these issues get resolved or at least documented in the deploy notes.

[TrinaAltman]

Same here (checked our prod system). Another undocumented change I am seeing is that subaccounts are always collapsed when first going to the page, whereas prior to the deploy they were expanded. If I expand them (or some of them), navigate elsewhere, and then go back to Subaccounts, they are all collapsed again. 

[kgrage]

I thought the expand button was a move button for reordering until I clicked on it. I don't think that style of expand/collapse is used elsewhere. I also wasn't able to get tooltip pop-ups for those new buttons in Chrome or Firefox (but those don't seem to be consistently used in the admin areas).

[theJBRU]

---

@InstContentTeam wrote:

Other Updates

• Accessibility Updates: Enhanced Structural Clarity

Still waiting for additional detail regarding this change. 

Specifically:

• What HTML elements are changing?
• What changes to the hierarchy of HTML elements are part of this change?
• What parts of the Canvas UI are affected by this change?

Any customizations that rely on current HTML elements and structure will need to be modified to accommodate these changes, so the additional detail will allow addressing those needs proactively.

This item has been on release notes over several postings. Does anyone from Canvas read and respond to these inquiries?

[TrinaAltman]

@theJBRU Thank you for continuing to advocate for this. Another school reported that they opened a Support case on some of the undocumented changes for subaccounts, and the response from Support was that they were changes that fell under the generic 'Accessibility Updates' categories that list no details. The impact on Admins for the subaccount changes (Instructure - please see all the comments on this page....) underscores the importance of knowing specifically what is changing, especially when it changes functionality in the UI.

[leward]

Ditto on the subaccounts issue.  The UI for creating and navigating subaccounts has never been great, but at least we could count on them being in alpha order before.  

[jlee16]

The sub-account ordering change is detrimental to account management - there needs to be a logic to platform organization or it just makes admin work more tedious and time-consuming.  

[TrinaAltman]

@ellen_peters @chriscas @leward @jlee16 

Subaccounts are back to being alphabetical now. 

[jlee16]

Yep - saw that as well, and informed the admin team.  Fastest bug fix ever!

[OscarLevin]

This update has broken the ability for an instructor to upload a HTML file that contains MathJax (or any other javascript).  We were using this for accessibility.  See the thread I created here: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Question-Forum/Uploaded-HTML-files-no-longer-show-mathjax-...

I'd love to submit an official bug report, but can't find anywhere to do that.