Idea System Broken?

[mwade]

I would like to propose that the Canvas Idea system for feature requests is broken.

There are 321 items that have been voted over 100 by canvas admins and are in the "no man's land" called "product radar." There are only 120 items that have made it into Canvas. That's only 1 in 4 requests that have actually seen the light of day.

Here are some observations:

• Many ideas get lots of votes only to get shelved as not important by the development team. It makes one ask why they bothered to go through all the work to not be taken seriously? It feels more like a scam to make us feel like we are being listened to when in fact there is little change of the idea seeing the light of day.
• If traffic is low during this time of year and an idea will likely not get 100 votes for that reason, it's broken. This sets an impossible standard to achieve. This is the second time we've faced this with an idea? Again, why bother if there is little chance of the idea seeing the light of day. Sadly, simply lowering the threshold will not improve the likelihood that an feature request will make it to production.

It leaves me wondering, does Instructure really listen or is this system just a bunch of red tape to tie things up and make it difficult to get issues fixed or improved? - Canvas team, please don't get defensive on this. I'm sure your intentions are pure, but the realities on our end may be providing a different result than your intentions.

Again, I propose that the entire idea/feature request system is broken. If there really are limited resources for development, Instructure needs a better way process their customer suggestions.

canvas idea feature idea #feature ideas

[Renee_Carney]

Laura & Others.  

Thank you for the ping.  This has been a great thread to read through.  When we went through the recent evolution of the process we considered a discussion pathway, but we didn't want to constrict users in any way.  In the previous process, we had a much tighter moderation process which was designed to accomplish what you describe above - more thoroughly constructed ideas.  There were a few big downsides..

1.  voting on an idea was delayed while it sat in moderation - sometimes a month or more
2. the process was focused on moderating ideas and not on surfacing the ideas that meant the most to customers and getting them in front of product
3. the process took a lot of dedicated community manager time, which isn't a bad thing, but when we evaluated what activities had the most return on investment for our customers, reading and moderating ideas was not as high on the list for the amount of resources it took.  (30-50 new ideas each day)

In this iteration of the process we were really striving for a 'template' of sorts for ideas.  A way to help frame an idea submission in a format like you describe above - problem statements.  However, in our work with Jive, we were not able to get a solution for this, yet.  

I love the idea of discussions around ideas.  I think all of the threads (above) have hit on some factors for why discussion is important.

• sometimes what works for one institution won't work for the other
• sometimes an institution thinks an issue is isolated to them, but when they post they find that many other people need a solution for the same (or similar) issue
• sometimes someone posts one potential idea (solution) and after a discussion they realize that another approach might be more empowering to all
• sometimes there is a work-around that someone has already found! 
• sometimes awesome community members will create solutions on the spot (or within a few days)! 

So, within our current software constraints (Jive) we strive to continue allowing an open and transparent approach for anyone that wants to submit an idea, but we also want a process that doesn't feel like another hurdle for someone just trying to share a pain point or potential improvement.  Thanks for the suggestions and thoughts on more adaptations to the process.  We read them all!

[mjennings]

 @tdelillo  wrote:

wild and possibly contentious.

Yes this is a good thing.. in a limited fashion. I think that the short turn around time we had for the Khaki homework help us not "over think" the requests. We were able to go with our guts so to speak.

But the tough part would be deciding, after all that discussion, what the exact idea is. And who would be the person responsible for ending the discussion and pulling out the core idea. The Community team? The originator of the discussion? 

I think you would definitely need a moderator of sorts to keep the discussion on task and then a "spokesperson" for the idea to the voting community. 

[mwade]

So your example of the color overlays brings up another big frustration with the process.

It seems that too many of the idea requests stem from poor design in the first place. Here are two examples:

• Color Overlays? Really? Does Canvas not employ a good graphic designer/UX specialist? (If they do they should get a new one!) Who would want to put a nicely designed tile and then have a random color put over the top of it. To me this is NOT a feature request but a design error. We shouldn't have to go through all these hoops to have a poor design decision fixed
• MGP Grade Export - I can export a single term or ALL terms. Our school uses three different active terms at any given time (Year/Semester/Quarter - depending on the class and grade level). So I have to either run three separate reports (one at a time) or I can run all terms. But all terms means just that - include all years in our Canvas system. There is no option to export active terms or even just current year terms! Why?! And when I asked about it, I was told that I could submit a "Idea" for a feature request!!! I wanted to scream! (which is rather unlike me BTW). Here again, this is an example of a feature that was implemented without thought to how it would really be used.

I shouldn't have to go through all the time and effort of a feature request and trying to get votes for something that should have been done right in the first place. Why is it suddenly my responsibility to convince all the other admins that the Canvas developers made a design error that needs to be fixed!?! And then to go through all that work, just to be told - sorry, we don't value that - sucks to be you! 

Who is doing ongoing quality control? Who is assessing the feature requests for things that should have been done right in the first place and fixing them because Instructure has the integrity to identify and fix their own mistakes?!

The Idea system should be for new big picture features - not bug/design fix requests.

Just because Canvas does better than D2L shouldn't be satisfactory. When did D2L become the standard? I appreciate the efforts that Instructure makes to get input from users, but that doesn't mean there isn't still a better standard. I come back to the "triage" concept. It doesn't seem that there is real understanding in this process.

[laurakgibbs]

I definitely hear what you're saying,  @mwade , although based on my 10+ years with D2L, I am not frustrated in the same way. I'm not invoking D2L as a standard; I'm just trying to share my experiences here, which is all I really have to offer, since I'm only an instructor, not a sysadmin or a designer or a programmer. I'm just a user learning by experience as I go along semester to semester.

So, while I understand the frustrated, I am confident that the color overlay problem will be fixed, and I am confident that Canvas will benefit from the effort people put into proposing alternative solutions (and there are several different proposals on the table there as a result of all the input). I was never able to contribute to discussions like that when we had D2L, and I am really glad to be able to contribute here.

Plus, like I said, I personally learn a lot from open discussions of bugs and design fixes. I don't have a problem with that being part of what happens here in the Community area, although I agree that the Feature Request area is clunky compared to other areas of the Community. Thank you for starting a discussion about that, and hopefully we will make some good changes here as a result!

[kona]

 @mwade , I can tell from this post that you are very passionate about these issues and wanting to make Canvas a better product. That being said, and will all due respect, why do you think the ideas you find important are the most important and mission critical for everyone using Canvas? Or even for K12 people using Canvas? I'm not saying they aren't important, but what makes these features more important than other features or ideas that are currently being worked on? That's the issue, everyone, and I do mean everyone, who uses Canvas has their own feature ideas that they think are super important and needs to be added now or fixed now. That's why Canvas has the Community and does things like Project Khaki - they want to hear what Canvas users (as a whole) want or think are important.

Heck, I've been begging for a better attendance tool, the ability to really grade one question at a time, and letting students see all of their assignment submissions since 2012. Yet, even though none of my ideas that I thought were mission critical have been implemented, Canvas has made some huge improvements in features and functionality. And, most of these improvements in their product and provided features I didn't even image or know that I would want back in 2012 (Example: link validator, context cards, & integration with Google Drive). Is everything they do perfect, no, but from the last five years of using Canvas they are always improving and always listening to their users.

In addition, sometimes features that might seem easy to integrate into Canvas might be quite complex. I'm not a programmer (but I'm married to one, so that's close enough, right? ;-)) and I know he'll often dig into the back-end of Canvas to look at something that appears straight-forward and instead it ends up being super complicated and impacts a lot of other features. This is important to note because Canvas can't add features willy nilly otherwise the overall product itself could suffer. Right now Canvas is extremely stable and rarely down (unheard of in the Industry 99.986% up time). Part of this is because Canvas is methodical and dots its i's and crosses its t's to make sure new features/functionalities are going to play nicely with each other. They are also pretty conscientious about making sure everything is accessible - which also takes time and energy. Does this mean that Canvas features/functions might not look or act exactly the way people want, yes, but it also means they are accessible and won't crash the system!

Overall I understand your frustration (really, I do, I've been there!) and I hope you continue to participate and share your thoughts/ideas in the Community. Canvas really is listening and they need to hear as many sides to a story/idea/feature as they can.

[mwade]

 @kona  wrote:

...why do you think the ideas you find important are the most important and mission critical for everyone using Canvas?

They are mine! Of course they are better! HA! - Seriously, that was never my point. Also, I'm in the IT world, so I do understand the development issues as well.

[Renee_Carney]

Hi  @mwade ‌

We are genuine when we say that we appreciate tough conversations like this, so thank you for expressing your thoughts.  I do think that many of the community members here have done a great job speaking to your thoughts on having an idea submission process and how it works, so I'm not going to address that at this time.

I do want to make sure and address a few of your specific concerns though.

• In your initial post you said

Canvas team, please don't get defensive on this. I'm sure your intentions are pure, but the realities on our end may be providing a different result than your intentions.

I sincerely hope you know that our intentions are pure and genuine.  We want to hear from all Canvas users, or we wouldn't invest time and resources in such a complex process.  Admins have channels through support and their customer success managers, but we want a channel that everyone can participate in.  This channel, the feature idea process, is well known, well received, and well respected, internally.  Ideas that rise to the top (and even some that do not garner a lot of votes) are directly communicated to product managers, and are highlighted in internal processes of prioritization.  All ideas are an important part of Canvas' future!

• Regarding your concern with 

There are 321 items that have been voted over 100 by canvas admins and are in the "no man's land" called "product radar."

Product Radar‌ is not a no-man’s land, at all.  It is a holding tank, yes.  It holds ideas that are important to Canvas users and to our product team.  Do we wish we had the resources to build everything, yes, but the reality is that we have a budget, just as you do.  Also, some features are dependent on the construction of others, so some things might be developed before others simply for that reason.  Choices are hard!

• Just a quick address for

If traffic is low during this time of year and an idea will likely not get 100 votes for that reason, it's broken.

I think Kelley already spoke to this, but you'll see in Changes are here: New feature idea processes that there is no longer a finite vote threshold. We now have many ideas above 100 votes. Some of them will continue on past their initial 6 month lifespan, and others will be sent to Cold Storage‌

• Projects like https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/6521-remove-colour-overlay-from-course-cards-that-have-an-imag..., the MGP Export (this idea?https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/3042-admin-grades-export-w-multiple-grading-periods" modifiedt...), and so many other feature ideas, are super complex. Once a feature is developed, it is released following thoughtful design, extensive quality assurance testing, and varied channels of user validation. Was it missed that someone would not want a color overlay on their image, probably not. It was probably a trade-off. Trade-offs happen all the time in development. Questions are asked like... what is more important 1) for the course card to be 100% custom, or for the calendar and course color to align? 2) for all end users to have autonomy of color (especially with accessibility) or for instructors to control the color? (*Disclaimer... I wasn't in the room when questions like these were asked.. these are just off the top of my head for example purposes). So, I dive into this not to say that your frustrations aren't valid, but that there are usually more difficult conversations in the background than what one might initially perceive.

• When it comes to statements like:

Does Canvas not employ a good graphic designer/UX specialist? (If they do they should get a new one!)

The answer to your question is, yes.  Instructure has an entire team of specialists who work hard to make the Canvas experience simple, streamlined and pleasant.  These are real people who are deeply invested in what they do, and part of their job is making difficult decisions.  Part of their reality is that they cannot please every single user, but by in large most people rate their work highly.

At one point or another we're all put in a position where someone can criticize the work we do.  At that point the choice can be made to build up the humans on the other end or tear them down.  Like the community members who have chosen to respectfully engage with you in this thread, rather than tearing you down for expressing views that may not align with their own, I hope we can continue to be a community that has complex conversations and strives to build people up and grow together.  As a community, and a company, we are people who care deeply about the experience you and other users have when using Canvas

[jthoms]

As one who tried the route of proposing a big picture idea (https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/1140?sr=search&searchId=874cd546-eeab-46e8-af05-cac6c8284a86&s...), in hindsight I can now see why this isn't necessarily the best forum for such discussions. While good, a big idea is often an enormous technical challenge. Solving that challenge would be a resource drain that could detract from making the whole Canvas product better over time. 

I feel Instructure does a great job of gathering feature prioritization input on a number of levels (through the community, ProServ, Khaki, and interactions with product managers and CSMs). Of these, the community is the the most "noisy" -- with the most ideas an opinions. I think the goal is to surface the sentiment of their wider body of users, not to promise to develop every top vote-getting idea (though, perhaps that would be a good thing to make explicit).

This isn't to say that the big ideas aren't important! I've got quite a few low-level, pet issues that I'm sure would make Canvas a better product (eg: aligning the functionality of sections vs groups, permissions that would lock students out of hidden tools and underlying content, clarity for a "current" module, more text/design options in modules). Do I think Instructure should drop everything they are doing, or double their engineering pool / license costs to get them done? Prolly not

[James]

laurakgibbs,

I've got to be the nay-sayer (a role I'm not unaccustomed to), but the discussion is supposed to happen after the feature request is made, to help clarify it. "Feature request" is an organizational label that helps people identify what's going on. A question is assumed to have a right or wrong answer, a discussion is for talking about things but there may not be a right or wrong answer, and a feature request is where people put their ideas.

What you're suggesting is kind of like having blue, yellow, and red file folders and saying that things that go into the red folder have to start off in the yellow folder, which by the way contains a bunch of other unrelated stuff so it ends up like you just shove anything into whichever folder is handy and ignore that the colors actually mean anything. At some point, you'll have to go through everything in the yellow folder to move some of it to the red folder.

What I think a better approach would be is for feature requests to be moderated and then the moderators, coaches, and anyone else who can approve a message can decide whether or not there's enough information there for it to be released to open it up to discussion (as a feature request) or whether the user needs to refine their feature request.

For example, the TeX exchange requires a Minimum Working Example (MWE) so that you can show you've looked into the question and tried something and show how far you've gotten. Without it, most people won't help you. The Canvas Feature Requests could establish certain criteria that have to be met to be a Minimum Viable Idea (MVI) or Minimum Feature Request (MFR). This is not based on the merits of the idea but whether it has met the technical requirements of a feature request. I like the MVI better than MFR because MFR might infer something about quality of the feature request, but I could go with MVR.

The original poster would have a certain amount of time to revise their idea and bring it up to meet the minimum standards. If they fail to do that, then remove the feature idea to cold storage or to deep freeze, which would be a different place than cold storage.

But I agree that many ideas are poorly developed. But I also suspect that some people may not be able to articulate their feature request and they're using as a way of expressing their displeasure with the way things currently work. They just want to say, "X sucks. I don't have a solution, but I want you to know that X sucks!" Where do we have those people express their comments? Do we make them seek out someone else who also thinks that and post their comments there? If so, then we end up with, "X sucks. By the way, so does finding anything about X in the Community, so both X and the Community suck! Oh, and I don't know how to fix either one."

There needs to be a place and/or way for people to express their displeasure without having to have a solution to go with it. People want to feel like they're heard. Maybe the Community needs to have questions, discussions, feature requests, and "complaints"? It could be something similar to a Twitter feed. I don't know Twitter and I'm not advocating one technology over another, I just suspect that some people just want to share their displeasure, not offer an idea.

I wondered at the beginning if this was a https://community.canvaslms.com/groups/community discussion. It may not have been, but I think it's quickly headed that way.

[mjennings]

 @James ‌ - as always, you articulate much better than I can. I would be totally behind this approach.

[laurakgibbs]

Hi  @James ‌, that moderation approach definitely sounds workable... if that is something the community managers would be willing to take on? Or people like yourself who understand the technical and design language well enough to be able to help others!

And that's all I was getting at: I see a lot of feature requests that are not ready for prime time, and my motivation to participate in discussions in the Feature Request area really diminished once I learned that those pages eventually get shunted off to Cold Storage where all that good discussion energy will disappear and not even be accessible to the Community search.

Having an area like Problems or Complaints or something like that might be very helpful: personally, I think it's more useful when people can pose their problem in the form of a question or a discussion... but it definitely does not help to post the complaint as a feature request without having thought through the feature request in more formal design detail.

Anyway, I am glad to see this discussion happening. I'm not frustrated to the degree that  @mwade ‌ is, but I do think the Feature Request area of the Community functions less efficiently than some of the other areas.

[James]

Or people like yourself who understand the technical and design language well enough to be able to help others!

My suggestion wouldn't require people that understand the technical. It's more of a checklist. Does it have a feature request, does it have a use case, does it contain just one idea. All those things that are listed in How do I create a new feature idea? 

You don't want people like me deciding based on the merits of the idea. K12 has different requirements than higher education does. Other countries have different requirements (ex: Australia wants you to keep documentation for 30 years). Some people want to give credit for just responding to a discussion rather than actually looking at the content of what they wrote, and some people don't even grade things but have the students do it . These are things I could never fathom as a Midwestern math teacher. I have a tendency to let my understanding of the technology suppress ideas because I know they can't be done. Some ideas are great but they can't be done [at least right now] and so you might end up with a compromise solution. If someone shot them down before they ever had a chance to express the initial idea, we might miss out totally.

This illustrates a problem that  @mwade ‌ brought up.

The Idea system should be for new big picture features - not bug/design fix requests.

We currently limit our feature requests to a single idea so that people can know what they're voting on. However, in real life, people often have a better solution than just fixing one thing, and they're dependent upon several things happening. Those don't filter up, so we don't really see any "big picture" features in the community -- we see little things that are focused on one tiny aspect of the big picture.

The "Complaints" category was an afterthought, but I suspect that many of the incomplete feature requests are because there's not a clear place to put things. If you're going to add a Complaints, you might want to add a Kudos or Compliments section as well. Getting all negative feedback can bring a person down.

[Renee_Carney]

I am loving this conversation.  You are all brining forward points and ideas that our team has exhausted for 2 years now  (and I'm sure we'll continue to rehash them for years to come!).  Ideation, which is the industry term for a process like this, is a multi-faceted complex process.  It is never cut and dry.  Creating a process that is simple and usable for the product users, but also easily consumable and valuable for the product developers is a difficult task!

[johnmartin]

Mel, James, Laura, Renee, et al,

THANK YOU for this discussion! It provides quite a bit of insight into workings that sustain the issues that Mel addressed. In my experience too, we are encouraged to submit ideas, we get support for them from the community, but we never hear back about the issues that prevent them from being implemented. For example, (as I recall hearing) the much-needed Images on Course Cards option was done as a side project relatively quickly (Hooray!) but removing the color overlay that rendered many of images, which seems pretty straightforward, has been met with silence. The community came up with many solutions for the Calendar text issues, and no other technical issues have been revealed. Given the silence, it seems that Instructure just doesn't care. There's no evidence in that thread to suggest otherwise. No explanation of delays. Just frustrating silence.

I won't rant here about Canvas Google Apps LTI authorization failures other than to say that I imagine (again, silence on Instructure's part breeds it) that the K-12 Google Apps Schools segment of the community was engaged (fair enough) in designing it because they all have students whose only account is through G-Suite for Education. Higher Education, whose students and instructors have multiple accounts, was somehow missed (again, an easy mistake) — but to not address it — much less fix it —once the (serious) issue is brought up again presents Instructure as uncaring and unresponsive.

Anecdotal evidence otherwise, as shared in this thread, is encouraging — but not as encouraging as actual communication from the company would be.

[G_Petruzella]

Hi  @mwade ‌ et al. -

This is a fantastic conversation - Mel, as others have mentioned, I respect the passion you clearly have for making things good for your community. That, as much as anything, seems a common thread among the people in the Community here.

There are 321 items that have been voted over 100 by canvas admins and are in the "no man's land" called "product radar." There are only 120 items that have made it into Canvas. That's only 1 in 4 requests that have actually seen the light of day.

My first thought was: "Wow, that many customer-initiated ideas that demonstrate critical mass are actually implemented!?" To my way of thinking, it's rather a high proportion. (Yeah, I know, I'm clearly a glass-half-full guy.) But really: given the complex realities of competing priorities that laurakgibbs‌,  @James ‌ and others have mentioned, to think that an upvoted customer idea stands a 1-in-4 or 1-in-3 chance of showing up in the Release Notes is remarkable.

I don't have much of a stake in this particular conversation: my small institution's needs are generally met by the existing product, with few and rare pain points. But I can, at least, say that I've seen Instructure's commitment to, and prioritization of, hearing and implementing customer needs as best they can. (I think it'd be interesting to tally up how many features among the Release Notes and Studio are tagged as having originated with a Feature Request!) I think you can rest assured that the mechanism (imperfect as any mechanism is) is at least not a "scam." 🙂

[mjennings]

1 out of 4...

[kona]

Seriously made me laugh! Thank you!!

[mjennings]

[bdalton_sales]

I'd do a count of all the "Canvas Community contributions:" in the production release notes from 2016 to see the percentage of community ideas that were implemented compared to other items Instructure worked on.  It's surprisingly high.  I think that's a better indication of how much is actually being driven by the community.

[James]

My response to this was kind of tangential and focused on one word: driven. Rather than clutter this discussion with it, I made it a blog post: https://community.canvaslms.com/people/james 

[Jeff_F]

Mel has a point in that there are quite a few ideas.  And some time last year I viewed this as a weakness as we are often found sorting through pages and pages of new ideas trying to find the hidden gem that gives us pause and the proverbial Aha! moment.  

But I understand the approach being taken and everyone should have access to submit ideas and I surely do not suggest that be changed.   It does however seem that some people are coming to the board to vent as they have unfulfilled expectations.  Perhaps the idea board needs an intake 'mini-course' where persons first need to invest a little time learning about the Canvas / software development process ahead of posting their own ideas. Maybe that activity would help align expectations?  Reward folks with a badge/ points/ etc.  Or would this be viewed as an impediment to idea collection?

This is looking familiar...  https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-4396  

[James]

 @Jeff_F ,

I suspect that many (most?) people coming to vent aren't interested in earning badges ... or anything else that keeps them from venting.

It would probably be seen as an impediment, but I like other systems where you have to earn enough points before you can ask a question (maybe because I never ask questions there). If there were a place where people could post to vent, that would allow those people to accomplish their tasks with minimal effort. For those who wanted to actually post a feature request, requiring that they at least read a couple of documents first may not be too burdensome.

I suspect the Community Managers will disagree, as Renee has already mentioned today. I'll be the first to admit I don't know anything about gamification and what drives people. They may have considered a vent or complaints section when they did the overhaul, so I'm not going to second guess them (enough other people are going to do that), but if they do a poll, I'll vote for it. I wasn't involved in the process (my choice) and ultimately, if it bothers me enough, I don't have to follow the feature requests.

[kaw]

I do not think 100 should be some magic number.  This number skews ideas from liberal arts educators as they are larger in numbers.  STEM professors' ideas do not get such numbers.   I do not expect much from CANVAS than what we have now because I would like them to make "taking care of bugs" more important than anything, especially when these bugs take place on what was already working when new releases are made.  Quizzing engine can revolutionize CANVAS if done properly; having permutation/combinations of all sorts of items proposed by many such as groups, etc will simply bog down the system and make it less user friendly.

[kona]

 @kaw ‌, luckily 100 isn't a magic number any longer!

Ideas are open for six months. Following six months, ideas in the top 10th percentile of vote will remain in the general forum.  Ideas in the bottom 90th percentile will be archived and moved out of the general forum, which makes room for new ideas. The archive process will occur monthly, on the first Wednesday of each month. - How does the feature idea process work

[gnoack]

I would rather have the system, even with some flaws, than not. It's a great forum to provide design and feature feedback to Instructure.  I don't feel like I was ever promised that just because the idea had 100 votes it would be implemented, only considered.  I think it would be unreasonable to expect 100 votes would change software that affects thousands. 

[michael_zinser]

Beautifully expressed, Mel.  Thank you.

[ariel_maldonado]

FINALLY FINALLY.

So many ideas that I have delivered and...NOTHING

It definitely it is so awkward, you CANVAS have so many teachers providing beautiful ideas and they seem wasted.

As simple as to create an option to print the lesson plans, and what a pain that it is. Or COPY and PASTE option for calendar items, or copy an event to as many courses, etc. etc etc. The system of the votes NEVER does it. I was so disappointed that I stopped providing ideas!

Please please change that vote system. If I were you and I see a great idea, just grab it and DO IT!

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi  @ariel_maldonado ‌...

I would encourage you to check out a couple postings earlier in this thread...if you've not done so already:

https://community.canvaslms.com/message/67504#comment-66979 (from Laura Gibbs)

https://community.canvaslms.com/message/67504#comment-67091 (from Renee Carney)

https://community.canvaslms.com/message/67504#comment-66970 (from Kona Jones)

As stated above, while it may seem simple to create an option to print the lesson plans, the programming involved may create issues or problems in other areas, so Instructure needs to carefully plan out how the functionality will work before releasing it to all of us in the Beta environment (and ultimately to Production).

[dbastedo]

This is not an issue that I have followed previously.  We are just implementing Canvas at our college as we speak.  It seems from all of this conversation that Canvas is working on implementing the ideas, but very few who are contributing are aware of the process.  The real issue is that there is a lack of communication and of the actual implementation process.  It would be smart for Canvas to describe what happens to all the ideas, the process of how ideas are chosen, and to give some type of time frame for implementing ideas.  If contributors of ideas knew what to expect from submitting ideas, they might be more patient.  Explaining the process in a blog like this that few will read is not truly effective.  There should be explanations and descriptions on the submittal page so that everyone is on board and can be patient.  Also, there must be some coders among the educational community that might be amenable to donating some of their services to enrich the entire educational community.  Even if they could not complete the entire concept, any pre-coding services should certainly help move things along.

[ariel_maldonado]

Every time I sent an idea, I did get follow up but it was mainly to say "I am sorry, your idea did not get enough votes, it will be saved under the database (vault) until someday it will get enough votes again"... very frustrating...

Mr. Maldonado

CYPRESS BAY HIGH SCHOOL

Math Department

(754)323-0350

www.Mr-Maldonado.com

[dhulsey]

Hi,  @dbastedo !  Canvas does more than  I have ever seen to promote transparency while actively encouraging input. Tons of information is disseminated at Instructurecon (an annual conference), and sessions are videotaped and presented online (Do attend if you can though. Instructure knows how to host a conference!).

How does the feature idea process work?‌ explains how community members can submit feature requests for consideration. There is a ton of information posted in the community.

Instructure also hosts events like the Khaki events where they invite active community members to their headquarters at their expense to see how things function and the challenges of prioritizing features with the available resources.

Here on the community, I know I can message the handful of Instructure employees I know and get a response back the same day. And I am simply a professor at a small college. Once, I emailed  @scottdennis  to get some help with an external tool that was not even a business partner with Canvas; they helped the tool's developer that day, which helped me. 

More, if you want to, you can go straight to the top and email the CEO  @josh5 .

I‌ know there are people who would like their pet features included yesterday. I feel the same way about my own pet feature: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/1102-publish-and-unpublish-announcements?sr=search&searchId=0c...‌, but I know that I also want the big projects they have been working on finished and in pproduction: Priority: Quizzes.Next, grade book upgrades, and role based mobile apps.

Anyway, I honestly do not know how this company could be more transparent and inclusive about their development process. And when I wanted more information, all I had to do was ask for it here in this thread, and I learned everything I wanted to know from this year's khaki's attendees. 

Anyway, welcome to Canvas and the community that surrounds it. My experience here has been good, and I hope yours is as well.

[ariel_maldonado]

Do not take me wrong, I love Canvas, and all the features. The complain is the ideas that after submission they never got the number of votes (it needed 100 and I always got like 4), and then received a very "professional" message from the staff saying, thank you for your cooperation and creativity, it will be stored in the vault for when more teachers retake the idea so that it can be passed to the implementation team. Ideas as simple as a Copy And Paste on the calendar that are so essential and it was not even contemplating because of # of votes. It seems the system will changed or already changed since days ago, fortunately! I have sent like 12 ideas and it went to nothing. I was so disappointed and had decided not to contribute any longer.

Mr. Maldonado

CYPRESS BAY HIGH SCHOOL

Math Department

(754)323-0350

www.Mr-Maldonado.com

[kona]

 @ariel_maldonado ‌, I'm glad that you've been part of the feature idea process, but sorry you don't feel like your ideas have been really looked at. The first thing to understand is that number of votes does not mean everything. I've seen some ideas with a handful - literally less than 10 - get implemented into Canvas because it fit with something Canvas was working on or a direction they were heading. Or, sometimes it was an engineers pet project that they worked on during hack week - https://community.canvaslms.com/community/ideas/blog/2015/11/30/tis-the-season-in-community?sr=searc...‌. I

've also seen ideas that have had hundreds (300+) sit for years because they don't fit with the direction Canvas is going or would take too much to implement right now. The feature idea area is just one of many places that product managers can get information about what the Canvas users want. It's not the sole place where all information comes from. 

The last thing I'd like to include is that to try and make the process better for everyone feature ideas have recently undergone a revamping. This change has allowed ideas to stay open longer and for the number of votes to not count nearly as much as the overal percent compared to other ideas - so keeping top ten percent, regardless of votes. 

So I guess what I'm saying is don't feel disheartened and please keep participating in the Community!

[ariel_maldonado]

Thank you! Now, could it be possible to jot those ideas down and display them in something like "IN PROCESS", if in reality they are being worked, so other teachers would not deliver the same ones again, and also, not notifying the users like the idea went to a vault, closed because did not receive the votes (if they are being worked like you said)?

Thanks for your previous feedback!

Mr. Maldonado

CYPRESS BAY HIGH SCHOOL

Math Department

(754)323-0350

www.Mr-Maldonado.com

[Renee_Carney]

Hi Ariel.

You can find overarching priorities that are in development, and individual ideas that are in development on this page https://community.canvaslms.com/community/ideas 

[mwade]

A couple issues.

• If Canvas has allocated 20% to the Khaki group priorities, where is the other 80 percent allocated? Is that all to internal priorities? More specifically, how much development time is pre-allocated to new ideas that are submitted over the year? I'm sensing from this discussion that it is very little to none. I get it that Canvas can't do everything, but is there really a budget for implementing idea requests (outside of Khaki). The perception in some cases is that the idea get's implemented if it was something Canvas already thought was important or was going to do anyway. (Yes, I've read the full thread here, so you don't have to repeat things that have already been said in the reply.)
• Bugs/Design Flaws. Honestly this is the "fly in the ointment" for me. I get it that Canvas can't do everything and has to set priorities. I get it that not all feature request can be implemented for various reasons. I do however believe that one of the things that is broken is identifying poor designs or implementation issues and correcting them. I mentioned two in another post (tile color overlay and MGP report generation). Canvas needs to budget for revisions to any new feature to fix things that were not done right the first time based community feedback. There needs to be a separate way for the community to identify and respond to these issues. It frustrates me to no end that whenever I point out a very practical problem with how something designed or implemented that I'm told I have to run the Idea Submission gauntlet.

The Bugs/Design Flaw issue I raised previously has not been addressed by the Canvas team here. Here's the link to the post so I don't have to repeat everything here.

I'm very interested in the Canvas team's responses to these two items.

[dhulsey]

Bugs and design flaws are not the same thing though, Mel. What you perceive as a design flaw is someone else's beloved feature. Several years ago, submission comments on assignments were sent to the inbox with a link to the assignment. It was one of my favorite features about Canvas. I have never had better communication with students before or since in my online classes.  Tragically, a small but vocal group screamed that they did not need to see submission comments in the inbox; they said this was a design flaw. Instructure listened, and now submission comments do not show up in the inbox. I hate that I lost functionality that helped my students and I because someone said it was a design flaw. 

I like that ideas have to be vetted through a process because I don't know you, and I don't know that your priorities and use cases are the same as my priorities and use cases. I want a chance to speak out if your "design flaw" is something I enjoy using. 

[kona]

 @dhulsey , do you have it turned on in your notifications? You can get assignment comments sent automatically to your email where you can then respond back, etc. I do this all the time with my students and as you said have some great conversations about their assignments because of it.

[dhulsey]

Yes. I have it turned on in my notifications, but not all of my students choose to use notifications. Sure, the notifications are the best substitute right now, but it is not the same.  

[Renee_Carney]

Very well said, Dallas.

 @mwade , you present your questions in a very 'black and white' form, however the answers are not black and white, which is why I think you're not feeling satisfaction with the answers you are getting.

1) We don't share every detail of how our engineering budgets are allocated, and we won't.  What we will assure you is that there are allocations for bugs, for innovation, and for core maintenance.

2) Dallas is spot on about some people's 'design flaws' being other people's 'favorite features'.  I'll take the example that you returned to, color overlay on the dashboard.  In the beginning, the dashboard was only a color, and the image was added per community request.  The designers needed a way to identify the course color that connected it to the calendar, and a color overlay is a pretty common design practice.  The overlay allows any user to select any color they like.  Most of the feedback we hear that is negative about the color overlay comes form instructors.  Understandably, instructors do not like that the image they selected is modified by a color.  When we talk to a student population, it's not that big of a deal.  They see the picture, and they pick a color that best identifies the course for them.  So, I know it's hard when you're passionate about something (I have strong feels too), but we have to keep in mind that our passions are often fueled by our perspectives and not shared by all.