Releases Q&A: 2021-06-19 Manage Courses Permissions

[erinhmcmillan]

Looking to discuss this feature from the 2021-06-19 Release Notes? Post a reply and start a conversation!

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[chriscas]

Much appreciate the added granularity here!

From my testing, it appears "Courses - Delete" also affects the reset button. Can anyone else confirm or deny that in their instance (we have custom JS installed and I want to make sure it's not interfering with my testing).  I hope this is actually how the permissions work, since reseting a course is essentially a delete and recreate at the same time, but always good to confirm.

Also one nitpicking comment is that for consistency with other permissions and sorting it seems like the permission group should be "Courses - Manage" instead of "Manage Courses".

-Chris

[agschmid]

This seems to have broken the reset button for instructors - it is only available for admins now.

[agschmid]

Manage courses > Courses Delete under Course Roles needs to be set for the instructor and it is working again. For some reason it seems to take approx 24 hours for permissions to work.

[dbrace]

I believe I read somewhere in the community or in other Canvas documentation that when working with permissions, some changes do not go into effect right away but changing a user account's time zone from their preferred, to something else, and then back to their preferred will force permissions to be reapplied.

[kirsten_ryall]

Yes, I seem to have lost the ability to reset course content when acting as an instructor too in beta. This is with the following permissions at course level. I assume it is related to this new update as I can access the reset course content button when acting as an instructor in production. 

[erinhmcmillan]

Kirsten,

Have you reported this Canvas support?

Thank you!

Erin

[kirsten_ryall]

Will do, thanks Erin. I wasn't sure if it was expected behaviour or not. I've emailed them with a link to this Q&A page. 

Kirsten.

[atcarver]

Does anyone have a link handy where what these permissions actually control is explained for Course Roles? There is no "What it Does" explanation in Beta as of yet, and I'm not finding this documented anywhere. Very excited at the possibility we could be able to lock down the "Reset Course Content" button. Thanks!

[kirsten_ryall]

Hi there, I've been trying to get an answer out of L1 support about exactly what is the expected behaviour regarding this release and course reset functionality. I'll keep you updated on L1 support response. It would be good to get this covered off in the release notes too of course.

What is your experience?

[atcarver]

@kirsten_ryall Thanks! When I take away the Manage Courses > Delete permission on our Teacher-based course roles in the Beta environment, our instructors no longer see the Reset Course Content button - which is great!

[kirsten_ryall]

Oh, I think I am seeing the opposite of what you are seeing. Reset Course Content button remains accessible me to when I act as a teacher in a course whether or not I have checked Manage Courses - courses delete. I think that Canvas Support advised the same thing too - that the button is not impacted. This was their response, 'The button would not be affected. The permission which allows users to see the button is what is under contention here. The button is available to users with the permissions use the button.'

[atcarver]

It seems this may have been a false positive or anomalous/erroneous finding. I'm not seeing this behavior anymore in our beta instance, and now the Reset Course Content button seems to persist in our instance. Is there a permission that's being tried out that was restricting that button? We'd really like to turn it off.

[kirsten_ryall]

Hi there, sorry just saw this message. According to the Canvas Permissions - Courses, the Courses - delete permission manages Reset Course Content Button access. I have not tested this out though recently. Just reading the notes 🙂. But if you read further down in this discussion, the Product Manager is reviewing it.

[dbrace]

I have a question.  Am I the only one that thinks that "Delete this Course" and "Reset Course Content" should be two separate permissions?

At my institution, we use JavaScript code to hide/disable various things in the "Settings" area of the course if they are using a role based on the "teacher" role.  For example, we hide/disable the "Delete this Course" and "Conclude this Course" buttons but show/allow the "Reset Course Content" button.

Any other thoughts on this?

[erinhmcmillan]

Hi,

Our product manager is reviewing the possibility of this change.

Thanks,

Erin

[dbrace]

Thank you for that information, @erinhmcmillan.. Do you know if they have any timeline?  Hopefully before the beginning of next semester or academic year.

[Steven_S]

@dbrace  I agree.  At our school deleting (or creating) a course would only be allowed for the canvas admins, but the reset course content button had been a useful function for me when setting up a course.  (For example, if the wrong course is copied into a shell at the beginning of course set-up, I can reset the content and copy the correct content into the course.) 

And below, it is confirmed that the permission has been separated 🙂

[kirsten_ryall]

Hi there, where is the best spot to stay updated on whether 'delete this course' and 'reset course content' button will be separated? Prior to June release, is it possible to find out what permission did manage reset course content functionality? I never did manage to get the information out of Canvas Support, but perhaps I didn't word my query well enough.

[dbrace]

@kirsten_ryall, my guess would be in this release Q&A or at Canvas Deploy Archive.

[erinhmcmillan]

The Reset permission has been separated per the Canvas Deploy Notes (2021-07-07) modified today.

Thanks,

Erin

[Tasha_Biesinger]

Previously, we had been told by Instructure Support that the presence/absence Reset button couldn't be controlled by any permissions and it was just an inherent thing based on the base Canvas Role i.e. Teacher and Designer roles had the Reset button and the TA role did not. Now that there is an explicit permission for course reset, we were excited to add the button to a custom role based on the TA role and remove the button from the base Designer role. We were not able to do this however - we enabled the permission for our custom role based on TA and the Reset button never showed up. When we reached out to Instructure Support, we were told that TA-based roles will never have the button regardless of whether we've enabled this permission.

This seems like an oversight and that we should be able to enable/disable the permission to control the presence/absence of the Reset button. If this is 'how it is supposed to be' per Instructure, can it be called out in the Release Notes and have these permissions not available to be adjusted for specific roles, or better, I would love to hear back that it was indeed an oversight and can be fixed so we can enable/disable the button for all roles as we need.