Canvas deploys contain code changes that are intended to fix bugs, improve performance, and prepare for new features, but they do not affect customer workflows. These deploys take place every two weeks and can be tested in the beta environment before the production deploy date indicated in the title of this document. Intended changes in workflow are noted in the Canvas Release Notes published monthly.
Deploy notes may include notable fixed bugs, bugs included in the Canvas Known Issues list, and additional updates that do not affect user functionality.
- Interface Updates
- Account Settings
- Course and User Search Character Count
- Course Settings
- People Search Character Count
- Courses
- Direct Share Course Code Search
- New Quizzes
- Quiz Question Copy
- New Rich Content Editor
- Group Links
- File Link Consistency
- Quizzes
- Student Extension Availability Date Rephrase
- People
- Student Assignments within Groups
- Fixed Bugs
- Accessibility
- Courses
- Grades
- Outcomes
- User Signup Pages
- Assignments
- Manual Post Policy Peer Reviews and Rubric Assessments
- Browsers
- Images and Safari
- Courses
- Google Slide Links
- Gradebook
- Anonymous Grading and Bulk Uploads
- Large Submission Uploads
- New Rich Content Editor
- Content Auto Size
- Elementary Theme Font Edits
- Image Link Edits
- Manually Created Uploaded Media Folder
- Notifications
- Hidden Files
- Permissions
- Permissions Caching
- Quizzes
- Precision Answers and Rounding
- Source Code Summary
Account Settings
Course and User Search Character Count
Summary
The Search field supports a minimum of two characters.
Change Benefit
This change enables courses and users to be searched by only two characters in an account, which accommodates more course and user names that may contain only two characters. Previously the search field required three characters.
Affected User Roles
Admins
Admins who need to locate a course or user can enter two characters in the search field and any applicable results display in the page.
Related Idea Conversation: Search trigger with just two characters
Course Settings
People Search Character Count
Summary
The Search field supports a minimum of two characters.
Change Benefit
This change enables users to be searched by only two characters in a course, which accommodates more course and user names that may contain only two characters. Previously the search field required three characters.
Affected User Roles
Instructors
Instructors who need to locate a user in the People page can enter two characters in the search field and any applicable results display in the page.
Related Idea Conversation: Search trigger with just two characters
Courses
Direct Share Course Code Search
Summary
The Copy To search field displays the course code below the name of each course result.
Change Benefit
This change helps users locate courses that may have similar names.
Affected User Roles
Admins, Instructors
When a user accesses the Copy To option in a course and searches for a course name, the course code displays below the name for course search results.
New Quizzes
Quiz Question Copy
Summary
Individual quiz questions can be copied within New Quizzes.
Change Benefit
This change helps instructors efficiently create copies of individual quiz questions. For instance, this functionality is helpful for formula questions that should generate different variables per question.
Affected User Roles
Instructors
Instructors can copy an individual quiz question within a quiz. Quiz questions can be copied when viewing the quiz and editing the quiz.
Quiz question copying is currently not supported for stimulus questions or item bank questions. Individual questions added to a quiz from an item bank can be copied, but the copy will not be added to the bank.
Related Idea Conversation: New Quizzes: Duplicate Question
New Rich Content Editor
Group Links
Summary
In Groups, the menu bar includes a Groups file link.
Change Benefit
This change allows users in a group to access their group files.
Affected User Roles
Students
Students in a group can open the New Rich Content Editor, select the Links menu, and select the Group Links option. This functionality allows students to link to group content. Previously only External Links were supported.
File Link Consistency
Summary
In the Course and Group Links, the sidebar retains the state of each section when the sidebar is closed.
Change Benefit
This change retains the state of whatever section was expanded or collapsed to minimize the number of clicks within the sidebar.
Affected User Roles
All Users
When a user opens or closes the Canvas Links or Group Links sidebar, the sidebar persists the state of the last expanded sidebar. For instance, if the Assignments section was expanded and then the sidebar were closed, opening the sidebar again would display the Assignments section as expanded until another section was selected. Previously the sidebar always closed each category when the sidebar was closed.
Quizzes
Student Extension Availability Date Rephrase
Summary
In the Moderate Quiz page, the Student Extension window includes clarification about quiz availability dates and student extensions.
Change Benefit
This change helps with clarification regarding availability dates and student extensions in Classic Quizzes.
Affected User Roles
Instructors
The Student Extensions window includes clarification about student extensions. The window states that quiz attempts whose availability dates have passed will still auto-submit even if the extended time has not expired.
People
Student Assignments within Groups
Summary
As part of a group set, groups can be created with a specific number of students per group.
Change Benefit
This change allows instructors to set a specific number of students per group when creating a group set.
Affected User Roles
Instructors
As part of creating a group set, instructors can create groups based on a number of students within the group.
Once a number of students has been assigned, students in the course are automatically and randomly added to groups. If the total number of students in the course doesn’t divide evenly into the given group size, the students will be distributed evenly across all groups. For instance, a course with 11 students where each group has five students results in two groups of four students and one group of three students.
Accessibility
Courses
When a course is attempted to be favorited from the All Courses page, the tooltip identifies that the course cannot be favorited unless the course is active. Previously the tooltip noted that the course could not be favorited at this time.
Related Idea Conversation: Change message displayed to user when trying to add a Past course.
Grades
The Student Grades page has been reformatted to accommodate responsive styling for browsers within 320px.
Outcomes
If an outcome group contains one or more outcomes that are currently aligned to content, and the outcome group is attempted to be deleted, the warning message identifies the group contains alignments and cannot be deleted. Previously the tooltip noted that something went wrong.
User Signup Pages
The Create Account button in the student, parent, and teacher signup pages retains focus in the Close icon for screen readers.
Assignments
Manual Post Policy Peer Reviews and Rubric Assessments
When a peer review assignment includes a manual post policy, students can submit a peer review via a rubric and view their rubric assessment even if the submission has not yet been posted.
Explanation: When a rubric was added to a peer review assignment with a manual post policy, and a student reviewed an assignment using the rubric, viewing the Show Rubric button did not display any indication the student had submitted a rubric for the peer review. Canvas code has been updated to allow students who have assessed another student to view rubric assessments, even if the associated submission has not yet been posted.
Browsers
Images and Safari
Images load correctly when cross-site tracking is not allowed in Safari.
Explanation: When the browser option to prevent cross-site tracking was enabled for Safari 13+, and a user navigated to a page with an older embedded image, it failed to load and generated an error. Canvas code has been updated to load images when the cross-site tracking option is not allowed.
Courses
Google Slide Links
This behavior was deployed to the production environment on August 27.
Links in embedded Google Slides function correctly.
Explanation: When a course used the Google Apps LTI, and Google Slide containing links was embedded in a course object such as a page or assignment, the link inside the slide was unresponsive. Canvas code has been updated to allow links to function correctly within the iFrame content of the embedded slide.
Gradebook
Anonymous Grading and Bulk Uploads
When an assignment has enabled anonymous grading, re-uploading assignment submissions does not display student names.
Explanation: When assignment submissions were downloaded and re-uploaded to Canvas, and the assignment enabled anonymous grading, student names displayed in the uploaded submissions confirmation page. Canvas code has been updated to remove student names when submissions are re-uploaded to Canvas.
Large Submission Uploads
Large submission files being re-uploaded to a course do not time out after one minute.
Explanation: When assignment submissions were downloaded and re-uploaded, any uploads that took longer than 1 minute failed and generated a page error. Canvas code has been updated to not time out with large uploads.
New Rich Content Editor
Content Auto Size
The content window no longer automatically resizes based on the contents of the editor.
Explanation: When a user edited content in the New Rich Content Editor, occasionally the editor would resize itself based on the content in the editor. Editing content would move focus to the top of the page.Canvas code has been updated to remove automatic resizing for content.
Related Idea Conversation: Do not auto adjust height in New Rich Content Editor
Elementary Theme Font Edits
Architect’s Daughter and Balsamiq Sans fonts save correctly in the New Rich Content Editor when accessed through the menu bar.
Explanation: When Architect’s Daughter or Balsamiq Sans were selected in the Rich Content Editor through the menu bar option, saving the content removed the font formatting. This behavior occurred with or without the Elementary Theme feature option enabled.
Image Link Edits
Updating a link on an image does not remove the link.
Explanation: When an image was added to the Rich Content Editor, and a link was added to the image, if the link was later edited, the link was removed from the image completely. Canvas code has been updated to not remove links after a link has been edited.
Manually Created Uploaded Media Folder
Course copies that include a manually created Uploaded Media folder resolves correctly when copying media content.
Explanation: When a course has a manually created folder called Uploaded Media, media uploaded through the New Rich Content Editor created an Uploaded Media 2 folder, since duplicate folder names are not allowed. When a course copy imported the Uploaded Media 2 folder into a course with an existing Uploaded Media folder created by the New Rich Content Editor, the Uploaded Media 2 folder failed to copy and generated an error. Canvas code has been updated to resolve course copies in folders with name conflicts.
Notifications
Hidden Files
Students do not receive notifications about hidden files.
Explanation: When a file was uploaded to a course and then changed the permission so it was only available to students with the link, a notification was sent to any users who have enabled file notifications. Canvas code has been updated to not send notifications for any files that are changed a hidden status.
Related Idea Conversation: Honour visibility settings in Files notifications
Permissions
Permissions Caching
Changing a permission in the Permissions page reflects the changed permission immediately.
Explanation: When a permission was changed in the Permissions page, the icon did not immediately reflect the new permission. Canvas code has been updated to improve caching within the Permissions page.
Quizzes
Precision Answers and Rounding
Precision questions support up to 16 decimal places.
Explanation: When a student attempted to answer a numerical answer classic quiz question that had a precision answer, the student’s answer was rounded to five decimal places, causing the student to never get a correct answer. Canvas code has been updated to support up to 16 decimal places for precision answers.
To view a summary of all code included in the deploy, please see the Deploy Source Code Summary (2020-09-09) reference sheet.
| Date | |
|---|---|
| 2020-09-02 |
Added—Fixed Bugs
|
| 2020-08-31 |
Added—Interface Updates
Added—Fixed Bugs
|
| 2020-08-28 | Deploy Notes Published |
