Features Q&A: Canvas Release Notes (2023-09-16)

[InstContentTeam]

Looking to discuss these features from the 2023-09-16 Release Notes? Post a reply and start a conversation!

New Features

• Account and Course Settings: Restrict View of Quantitative Data
• Gradebook: Point Based Grading Scheme
• Outcomes: Decaying Average Calculation Update
• Pages: Editing Page Title Updates the URL’s
• Permissions: Admin Analytics Account Role Permission

Feature Options

• New Quizzes: Build on Last Attempt
• New Quizzes: Improved Item Analysis Report
• New Quizzes: QTI File Exporting Available
• New Quizzes: Share Item Bank with Course Checkbox Update

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

[burrasto]

I'm not 100% sure this is connected to the current release, but an issue that we are running up against is the version numbering in page URLs.  Some of our content editing process has involved situations where pages with the same name are created within the course and one of them would be automatically renamed and numbered, that number becoming part of the URL.  Now even with deleting the original page and changing the name the URL version number remains, which can leave some broken links.  Do we have a way of controlling this in the URL anymore?  Is there a reason that these version numbers are being preserved?

[AllisonHowell]

Hi @burrasto, you are correct in thinking this is connected to the current release. In regards to your first question, the URL has never been directly controlled by the user. The reason we're preserving the version number is because we are now maintaining the history of a page's previous URLs so that we can guarantee that when a link is embedded in the RCE, it will always work (even if the underlying page's name has changed). This change was made after receiving years of feedback that customers wanted us to address this, and our approach was informed by a community survey with over 200 respondents. I hope this helps clarify your question! 

[burrasto]

I figured this particular aspect of the update must have been about preserving a history of the pages, but in our particular case it ultimately created the problem it was intended to prevent because the links' target page was deleted, and we were no longer able to change the URL of the new page so it would match what all the existing links were referring to.  That said, I believe we have found a workaround work flow that avoids having pages with the same name ever show up in the course in the first place. 

[AllisonHowell]

I'm so sorry to hear this created a problem for you and your team. We always try to avoid messing with workflows that are working. In this particular case, we tried to get as much input from the community as possible so that we could land on the right solution for as many users as possible. I really appreciate your thoughtful investigation and willingness to find a workaround, even though it's not ideal. 

[burrasto]

We've run into some additional trouble that I think is related to this, thought I cannot see exactly how.

The first is going to be more of an issue for Design Tools, than for here.  When we imported a course that had the incremented URLs I described above, the Design Tools widgets quit working, the error message indicated that they were not recognizing the pages as being in any modules.  After changing the page names, so that the URLs would have a fresh name without sequence numbering, the scripts were able to recognize which modules the pages were in.

The issue that seems to be more on the Canvas end is that the top link on the left side menu failed to point to the imported Home page.  Pages were selected for the Home Page and the course Front Page was also appropriately selected, but the link just loaded a blank page with the Home Page title.  There wasn't a new empty page that had been automatically generated that was visible. When we selected a different page in the course as Front Page the link would correctly land there.  Again, after changing the name and URL of our intended Home Page, the link loaded it.  The imported Home Page title was the original and didn't have any version numbering.