Archiving Content to Improve Searches

[KristinL]

August 29, 2022

The item you were looking for has been archived.
The question or URL was archived as it was authored before July 31, 2019.

Use the search bar (above) for the most accurate search results.

Didn’t find what you were searching for? 

How do I use the guides in the Instructure Community?

How do I ask a question in the Community?

Read on if you’d like to learn more about the archive process.

If you find that the URL that was archived is essential to your workflow, please see the recovery option at the bottom of this post.

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Hello Community!

Did you know that the Community is currently home to over 47,875 Canvas-related questions? That’s an amazing statement about Community members’ drive to support each other through the initial adoption, troubleshooting, and advancement of Canvas use. 

A number of Community members have brought it to our attention that retaining questions and conversations dating back to April 2015 can feel overwhelming, especially to those who are new to Canvas. We acknowledge this feedback, and we agree.

To better help you and your fellow Community members find relevant and current content, our first archive in the Question Forums will take place on Thursday, August 25.

Why archive?

We weighed the benefits and challenges of archiving material from our Community. During the last seven years, an incredible amount of knowledge has been shared within the Canvas Question Forum. The collaborative mentality of Community members like yourself is an incredible gift for others who share your teaching and learning journey.

We acknowledge that some of the older threads still hold value and are still considered best practices. However, when technology and education advance so quickly, Community members should feel confident that they found a solution that will help them accomplish their goals.

With this first archive event, we will retire all content in the Question Forum that was authored on or before July 31, 2019. This will allow all questions less than three years old to remain in the Question Forum. During this process, we will also identify the older threads that received replies within the last 6-months and allow those to remain available. We feel this change will positively impact the quality, efficiency, and relevancy of your searches as well!

This will be the only time this number of items will be removed from the Community at once. Moving forward, you’ll notice a quarterly cleanup.

What if I lose access to something I need?

If you saved a link to a favorite conversation that happens to be archived, don’t worry! You can submit a “restoration request” at any time by completing our form. The Community Team’s goal is to review requests on Tuesdays.

[Nancy_Webb_CCSF]

Thanks for the blog post, @KristinL.  Some things definitely need archiving, because answers have changed, the original answer no longer applies.  I plan to look for posts with solutions I want to keep and use your restoration request form.  Appreciate that option!

[SusanNiemeyer]

@KristinL  While there is a note instructing students to contact their instructors/ schools with questions related to their specific classes, is there a more efficient way for Infrastructure to flag those kinds of questions and give a standard response?

[KristinL]

Hi @SusanNiemeyer - We could build a "template" of sorts for responses, but there is not a way to filter questions that are course- or instructor-specific and have that reply automatically applied. It's an interesting idea, but it's not something we can automate at this time.

[Nancy_Webb_CCSF]

Would it be possible to keep the question archive somewhere separate, where it could be searchable knowing that it might be out of date?  A choice.

[KristinL]

Hi @Nancy_Webb_CCSF - The Community Team explored this option. We hoped we could create an "unlisted" section of the Community where archived (or outdated) material could live, but it would get complicated with permissions, etc. Additionally, if you have permission to access the item, it will display in your search results. It was a great question, and we hope that the lift tomorrow doesn't negatively impact your work process. 🙂

[Nancy_Webb_CCSF]

It's funny, but I was just looking up whether someone has come up with a clever way to track student usage of external links on a page.  Found a post from 2016 that actually had a workaround, although it only works with Access Reports, not New Analytics. It still works. Still, I am sad we are losing these esoteric items. Solved: Analytics for individual URL links on page...How d... - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com...

[gpillsbury]

You need to tell internet search engines about this policy.  The first result of the question I just searched for has apparently been archived, leaving me with no way to access a potentially quick solution.  Now, I have to re-ask the question and wait (hopefully) for answers.

[puzzlealbatross]

This is incredibly irritating. I've clicked on a whole series of the most relevant google search results for an issue I'm having in Canvas, and every single one of those links sent me to this page. I could access those help pages last month before I started my new job, but now that it's more urgent, they are all dead links. This is not "retiring" the help pages; it's erasing them. They are gone, no redirects.

[MichelleMathis]

This page is new and I am struggling.  Used to be very easy to google help for Canvas.  I can't find anything now (only this page) and can only hope that someone will answer.  Why did this have to become so difficult when it originally worked?  

I am trying to use the feature of message students who.... however on some the of assignments that were imported, The message students who feature is not available or it is disabled.  The assignments are published and I can't seem to identify any difference in them that would cause one to be disabled and not the other.

Does anyone have any suggestions?  I would appreciate the help.  Thank you in advance.

[KarinKW]

Since archiving content on this page, I cannot access the answer to a question that has been asked many times (according to my internet search).  So I'll ask it again:

How can I delete past courses from the Parent App?  The app is full of a mix of current and past courses which makes it difficult to sift through all of the information.  I have updated the course list on the web-based dashboard but cannot do the same on the Parent App.  Without being able to edit the course list on the Parent App it becomes too cluttered and cumbersome to be useful.

[jasonhagerman]

This was an awful idea! The first result of a google search for a question I have has apparently been archived, leaving me with no way to access a potentially quick solution.  Now, I have to re-ask the question and wait (hopefully) for answers or just give up. How foolish. 

[WilliamJohnson5]

I was searching to find if I could import my course from Canvas Free for Teachers to PowerTeacher, and saw a positive response online under a Google Search from this site, which said that I could, but I cannot find it once I get here. The verbiage on Google says, "Sep 7, 2018 — @jvulcano , yes, you and your students can use it. When you get started don't click on Canvas Network, instead, click on “Find My School.” On ..." but I can't find that posting when I get in here on this site - not anywhere.

Thank you,

Bill

[WilliamJohnson5]

Okay, I see that the problem is archiving, so let me re-ask the question: How do I link my existing Canvas Free for Teachers course to PowerTeacher?

Thank you,

Bill

[Renee_Carney]

Hey all.  Thank you for your comments here - they helped us realize that while outdated content has been cleaned up from the Community search, the search engine indexes have not caught up [yet]. We're looking to see what we can do to speed up that process so that the user experience is the most consistent and accurate for all.  

We know it is convenient to search from a general search engine, and most of the time it is accurate. Until the indexes catch up please search using the search bar on the Community home page. 

Here's a couple resources for some of you that commented (and thank you, again!) 

• @gpillsbury -  You may find the information in this guide helpful - How do I cross-list a section in a course.
• @MichelleMathis -  How do I send a message to students from the Gradebook may have the information you need.  You might also want to perform a cache/cookie clear on your browser, just to be sure pages are loading correctly. 
• @KarinKW - Depending on how the school has set up parent accounts and courses, you may be able to clear old courses by Removing a course from my dashboard. 
• @WilliamJohnson5  -  Instructor FAQ: Canvas and PowerTeacher Grade Passback may be helpful. 

[DANIELHENNEKE]

@Renee_Carney my problem is not the the search engines haven't caught up. My problem is that several answers from your team link to answers previously given. I understand the need to do that, why reinvent the wheel. However, in this archiving, you have deleted the blueprint for the wheel.

I am trying to find out how to enter a fraction as an answer in a quiz. I can type in fractions in the question, but the system will not let me enter one as an answer. Fraction are numbers too! 

[Renee_Carney]

@DANIELHENNEKE you're right. I just found the unfortunate cross-linking that I believe you ran into. Many of these old threads existed before we could merge threads, which is also part of the motivation behind archiving and cleaning up. 

I went back and looked at the answer provided in the question thread I had originally linked to in Fraction Responses on a quiz? and it actually did not have an up to date answer.  The best answer is found in this idea conversation  New Quizzes: Responses in Fractions for Formula Qu... - Instructure Community.  Fractions are not currently supported unless an instructor has set up an essay style question that uses the rich content editor which has the math editor available. 

Solved: Typing Fractions is also a valuable thread on the subject. 

[dmatchett]

All this archiving has done is make it much harder to find answers and the user experience is suffering. It's unnecessary and needs to be retracted - put a small warning on older posts that the info might be out of date, but let us see them. It's ridiculous to make us dig 10x harder for assistance.

I've now had to start looking at the help pages of other institutions instead of Canvas support to get answers.

[Renee_Carney]

Hey @dmatchett 

Sorry this is frustrating.  We agree that this is harder than it should be right now and a big part of it is that we did not foresee browser search indexes being the hurdle it is. The search experience will get better as they catch up. 

In all fairness, we really needed to make this adjustment. One of the most frequent pieces of feedback we have received is that there is too much to sort through and many of the top results are out of date. We appreciate your patience and understanding as the indexes catch up with the updated content. 

[MarkS2]

This archiving is a HORRIFICALLY bad idea. There are important questions being asked on the site that I would like to review and I can only see them in Google caches. I don't want to wait until Tuesdays to gain access to the information either.

Please offer users a searchable archive, as Nancy Webb suggests.

[wim_rosendahl]

I have to rely on Google Cache to hopefully find my answer, Seriously? 

[Renee_Carney]

@MarkS2 & @wim_rosendahl 

We appreciate the feedback.  We have also researched having a searchable archive, however we're not able to provide that option and clean up the overall search for users, sorry.  Please do use the search at the top of this page to find an answer or resource that is more current and up-to-date (less than 4 years old). 

[Paultto]

Who made this decision to erase useful Canvas discussions? This site used to be incredbily useful.

[DavidMallin]

What a TERRIBLE idea!!

I'm looking on how to integrate my App with Canvas via LTI 1.3. 

In Canvas, if I try to add an "External App" in my course settings I get asked for a "Consumer key" and "Secret" (that to me looks like an OLD LTI way to do things) but no help/information is provided; and the only Google hit I can find leads me to this "Now Archived" page

I hope you understand how a glorious facepalm this is. You're deliberately obfuscating information and making your platform the worst possible experience for third party integrators.. way to go for promoting your products

[Renee_Carney]

Hi @DavidMallin 
It sounds like you would like to integrate an app that you built with Canvas. If that is the case, we actually do not have the directions for that in the Community, you'd need to reach out to our Partners department.  

We do have  Partners  featured in the Community, but to become a partner you'll want to read more at Partnership Information - The Edtech Collective | Instructure 

[wardex]

@Renee_Carney I just searched using the search bar on the community page and got this answer:

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Admin-Discussion/Is-there-a-way-to-create-a-link-to-a-fold...

which links to a page that has been archived.... 

[KristinL]

Hi @wardex  - As you identified, it's likely that we'll find resources linked within other material. We were able to restore the link included in your example. We hope the restoration request form will make it possible for Community Members to access bookmarked URLs and items included in more current threads.

[StevenBell]

I'll add my voice to the chorus of frustrated users.

Thousands of organizations have had to deal with this problem of having large amounts of old and possibly outdated content, and there are plenty of good solutions:

- Put a banner on posts > 3 years old.

- Lower the relevance of old posts in search results, or hide them altogether.

- Lock old threads and move them to an "archived" area of the forum.

- Allow users to identify content that is out of date (not just old, but incorrect) and flag it as such

But actually making this stuff disappear from the internet is a truly awful way to "fix" the problem -- throwing away the diamonds with the dirt.  Canvas is a substantial piece of software, and so it's quite normal for me to find the obscure answers to my question in a single post from a few years ago.  Often the answer isn't perfect, or it's partly outdated, but it's still useful.

The problem isn't that search engines are out of date and redirecting me to this page; the problem is that information has been removed.  I trust you still have this "archived" content stashed away somewhere; I'm begging you to please put it back online in some form.

[DavidMallin]

@Renee_Carney you (as in "Instructure") might not be willing to share these "integration" information in the forum and hide them behind a convenient paywall (partners!), but other users of the forum might!  I'm just a freelancer trying to make a client happy and I've 90% of the work done and not sure of having the budget to pay for a partner account (which I'm not) just to solve this issue; Curiously, only deep linking doesn't seem to be working with Canvas (and "only" with Canvas, while other LMS implementing LTI 1.3 work perfectly). I Googled about this specific topic and I actually found a post in your forum discussing this... but it was conveniently archived...

Making knowledge of how to integrate with your platform freely available to the development community would only be a winning strategy to increase adoption of your product.

[Renee_Carney]

Greetings all - We've been watching the the number of daily views to this blog decline, which tells us the browser search indexes are catching up. This clean-up was a bit more painful than anticipated and we appreciate your patience and grace as we endured it together. We're going to now close this thread for comment. 

If you do encounter a piece of content that you would like us to consider restoring, you can submit a “restoration request” at any time by completing this form.