Ready Release Notes (2020-04-25)

[#1]

The following features will be available in the production environment on 2020-04-25:

Courses

Instructor Publishing Improvements

• User Role: Instructors
• Opt-in: Yes

DocViewer

Student Notifications

• User Role: Students
• Opt-in: No

Reports

User Course Access Log

• User Role: Admins
• Opt-in: No

Release notes describe upcoming Canvas functionality and are subject to change.

• Follow the Ready Release Features document to be notified of updates
• For all release changes to this document, view the Release Notes Change Log
• If you notice any contrary functionality compared to the outlined behavior in these notes, please file a Canvas support case according to your institution's support protocol
• Deprecations and end-of-life announcements related to Canvas Platform Services (APIs, GraphQL, Canvas Data) are located in the Canvas Platform Breaking Changes page.

• Updated Features
• Courses
• Instructor Publishing Improvements
• DocViewer
• Student Notifications
• Reports
• User Course Access Log

Release Notes Change Log

Updated Features

BACK TO TABLE OF CONTENTS

Courses

Instructor Publishing Improvements

Feature Functionality Details	Help for Unpublished Courses Feature Option
Affected Canvas Areas	Card View Dashboard, Courses Menu, All Courses Page
Affects User Interface	Yes
Affected User Roles	Instructors
Feature Enhancement Ideas	Existing course publishing feature ideas
Specified Tag for Feature Ideas	publish
Community Idea Contributions	https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/8934-show-publishedunpublished-status

Summary

The Dashboard, Courses menu, and All Courses page display both published and unpublished courses.

Change Benefit

This change helps instructors see what courses are unpublished in various Canvas locations.

Affected User Roles

Instructors

The Dashboard, Courses menu, and All Courses page all indicate if any courses are unpublished.

Dashboard

The Dashboard displays two sections: published courses and unpublished courses. Unpublished courses display at the bottom of the Dashboard. 

Note: The Dashboard only displays favorited courses for the current term or course dates.

If an instructor has been given the Course State - Manage permission, courses can be published directly from the Dashboard without having to open the course. The existing behavior for publishing courses still applies—Canvas will display the window to select a home page if no Modules exist in the course.

Once published, the course displays in the Published Courses section.

Courses Menu

From Global Navigation, the Courses menu also displays courses as published and unpublished. Once a course is published, the Unpublished heading is removed, and the published course is listed along with the other published courses.

Note: The Courses Menu only displays favorited courses for the current term or course dates.

All Courses Page

In the All Courses page, unpublished courses are identified with a gray background if they are within the current term or course dates and display at the end of the section. Unpublished courses in past or future enrollments also display at the end of the section, but they are not indicated with the gray background.

Once the course is published, the gray background is removed.

DocViewer

Student Notifications

Affected Canvas Areas	Notifications
Beta/Test Environment Support	Not supported
Affects User Interface	Yes
Affected User Roles	Students
Feature Enhancement Ideas	View existing Notifications feature ideas
Specified Tag for Feature Ideas	notifications
Community Idea Contributions	https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/9649-notify-students-when-docviewer-annotations-have-been-left...

Summary

Students are notified when comments have been added in DocViewer.

Change Benefit

This change helps students know when their instructor or TA has added comments in a DocViewer-supported document.

Affected User Roles

Students

In DocViewer, instructors and TAs can add comments in supported documents. If students have enabled the Submission Comment notification type, they’ll receive notifications when a comment has been added to their document via their specified communication channel(s). Notifications can be updated in the Notification Preferences page from the Account Menu.

If annotation comments have been made anonymous, notifications are sent without the user’s name who posted the comment.

Reports

User Course Access Log

Location to Enable Feature	Account Settings - Reports
Affected Canvas Areas	Reports
Beta/Test Environment Support	Yes
Permissions	Courses - View Usage Reports
Related APIs	Account Reports API
Affects User Interface	Yes
Affected User Roles	Admins
Feature Enhancement Ideas	View existing Reports feature ideas
Specified Tag for Feature Ideas	reports

Summary

The Reports page includes the User Course Access Log report.

Change Benefit

This change provides a basic account-level report that provides admins with key usage data in monitoring and reporting student online engagement.

Affected User Roles

Admins

The User Course Access Log report requires configuration by an admin. Configuration options include Term Date, Start Date, and Enrollment Type.

This report shows all the activity from users enrolled in all courses in a specified timeframe. While configuring the report, an admin can specify a start date up to one month in the past, the end date will be defaulted to the present. Filtering based on user role is also available. 

The resulting csv file will have one row per student activity and will have the following headers: section id, section sis id, section name, course id, course sis id, course name, term id, term sis id, term name, user id, user sis id, user name, content type, content, times viewed, times participated, last viewed. 

The times viewed and times participated are counters from start date until the time the report was generated. A maximum of one month's data could be retrieved. If no start date was selected, by default the report will return data from the beginning of the previous week.

Release Notes Change Log

BACK TO TABLE OF CONTENTS

Date
2020-04-22	Release Notes Published

[ellen_peters]

I wonder why the unpublished courses have been labeled 'Drafts'. I would prefer the heading 'Unpublished courses'. Instructors may think that a draft is a different kind of course type, not just an unpublished course. What do others think of this?

[Chris_Hofer]

 @ellen_peters ...

I agree with you.  I'm guessing the "draft' wording is there because it's consistent with unpublished content in a course (i.e. Draft State).  But on the Dashboard, it would be nice to see both "Published Courses" and "Unpublished Courses".  That seems much clearer to me, too.

[mzimmerman]

I also agree.  "Drafts" does not align with any previous documentation or terminology we've used to describe unpublished courses, and will just confuse instructors.

I'm not totally sold on listing unpublished courses separately--I'd prefer to see it simply made clearer in the dashboard which courses are unpublished--but I can at least see the potential value to it.  Renaming unpublished courses "Drafts" does not really accomplish anything.

[mjennings]

On the Doc Viewer comment notifications, will the notifications send if the column grade policy is set to manual? Our faculty want to hold all of the comments until they have finished grading all students, It isn't mentioned if this notification is controlled by the column grade post policy.

[straussi]

Agree with comments on the labeling of Unpublished courses as "Draft".  Our faculty and designers are not familiar with this label and it is going to confuse them. I like the highlighting of Unpublished courses in All Courses, but we may opt-out due to the new labels on the Dashboard.

[milesl]

Can you clarify where this language was changed?

[Chris_Hofer]

 @milesl ...

It is described at the top of these Ready Release Notes...under "Courses: Instructor Publishing Improvements" (including the screen shots).

[milesl]

Whoops, I was looking at the wrong release notes. Thanks Chris!

[lph]

Using the word draft is strange when the description above the screenshots state: “The Dashboard displays two sections: published courses and unpublished courses. Unpublished courses display at the bottom of the Dashboard.“

I do like the idea. 

[olden043]

Regarding the Instructor Publishing Improvements - the heading structure is not accessible. The Dashboard is a heading level 1, Published Courses and Unpublished Drafts are a heading level 2 and so are the course cards in each category. Course cards need to be heading level 3 in order for it to be acccesible. If this is not done then the user has to go through every published course to be able to view the unpublished courses.

[erinhmcmillan]

Thanks, Luke! We'll make sure this gets resolved.

Erin

[erinhmcmillan]

Hi, Matthew,

DocViewer notifications respect the post policy for the assignment. I confirmed with the engineers to be sure.

Thanks!

Erin

[marisa_m_delsav]

This release coincided with the error that a few of us are receiving when using New Quizzes and attempting to select random Questions from item banks. Is this coincidental or did the new release disable this functionality?

[erinhmcmillan]

Hi, Marisa,

If you're viewing an error, there's a behavior that has occurred with the code, which is part of Canvas deploys. Canvas releases are only enabling the code that has already been placed in a specific environment. I'd recommend submitting a Support case if you haven't already so our team can investigate.

Thanks!

Erin

[marisa_m_delsav]

Thank you. Am I permitted to submit a support case as a user or do I need to contact my county administrator for that? It’s OK if you don’t answer I’ll probably find out but in case you can shoot me a quick email that would be great.

Get Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef>

[erinhmcmillan]

Hi, Marisa,

Your institution should have a preference for how to submit cases. Check your Help Menu in Global Navigation and see if there's an option to report a problem—if so, that goes directly to Canvas support. If not, you may see a link to contact your institution's IT help desk or some other means of getting help with Canvas.

Thanks!

Erin

[jonna_radegard]

Hi, is it possible to select Quiz Engine Option in a Blueprint so that all courses conectet to the Blueprint get new quizzes as prefered one? Best Regards Jonna

[PSU_Tony]

Unpublished Drafts? Really? Why would you bring in new vocabulary? You are doing this to help faculty be less confused, but you introduce new terminology which will confuse faculty. We will not turn this on until it is changed to courses. How did that make it through testing? 

[erinhmcmillan]

Hi, Jonna,

The quiz setting is an individual preference, so it isn't possible to assign a preference for multiple courses from the admin level. 

If your institution only wants to enable New Quizzes, you can change the option to on so classic quizzes isn't available.

Thanks!

Erin

[rake_9]

Agreeing with others on the Unpublished Drafts language.  This isn't a thing my users have asked for much, but I can see it being useful.  However, "draft" is not a word I'd use in this context.  There is already a perfectly useful and familiar phrase - unpublished course. It doesn't really need embellishment.  Also, in that big long list of all courses - can courses that are unpublished just always have a gray background?  So much easier to scan.

[Chris_Hofer]

 @ellen_peters ,  @mzimmerman ,  @straussi ,  @milesl , lph,  @PSU_Tony , and  @rake_9 ...

Looks like the "drafts" language will be changed soon: Canvas Deploy Notes (2020-05-09).

[lewisale]

Subject: Canvas DocViewer annotated comments change

I noticed the Canvas DocViewer annotated comments are now showing up with a scroll bar.  I find this is not as user-friendly as the prior format. It would have been user-friendly for the annotated comments to expand when clicking on the comments vs. having to use a scroll bar.  Or, being able to resize the annotated comments when clicking on them to read. I envision these changes might impact whether a student scrolls through all of the feedback.  It is also difficult for me to navigate the feedback I provide when I want to review the feedback.  Now, I have to go through each comment to use the scroll bar. 

 AnnotatedFeedback‌ 

#canvas docviewer‌

-Alex

[erinhmcmillan]

Hi, Alex,

Thanks for noting this functionality! Have you submitted a case to our Canvas support team? That's the best course of action so they can triage the behavior and notify our engineers if needed.

Thank you,

Erin

[lewisale]

Thanks for your reply erinhallmark‌!  I apologize for any confusion with my comments.  I was bemoaning the new changes to the Canvas DocViewer. 🙂

[JACOBSEN_C]

Is there a way to just add the button to unpublished course cards and not split the Dashboard into two sections?

[b_w_reid]

Hi  @lewisale ‌. I'm interested in finding out more about the change you are referring to. Do you have a link?

[lewisale]

Hi  @b_w_reid ‌. I first observed the change when I looked at my annotated feedback in the Canvas DocViewer. I noticed there is now only a certain number of characters appearing and a scroll down bar. I find this breaks up the flow of the comments, and unfortunately, there is no resize option to open up the annotated comment fully.  For a visual, see the Manage Comments section: How do I add annotated comments in student submissions using DocViewer in SpeedGrader? I am referring to the #3 of the Manage Comments section.