Improving Announcements

[mike_ulrich]

Apologies if I'm posting this in the wrong forum…

Two frustrations with Canvas announcements which I haven't seen mentioned in any of the discussions about the pending redesign so I'm creating this post. Looking through the community history, both of these have been raised by numerous people, going back 7+ years. Many teachers really want these features, so I was disappointed that they weren't mentioned as part of the redesign. 

First, when copying an old Canvas Course, most content is moved over without too much of a headache, with the largest exception being announcements. The profile icon associated with copied announcements is a "U", which draws students' attention to the fact that you're copying content from an older course. Once I edit an announcement, the profile icon should be updated to show I am in fact the author (which I was in the prior Canvas course, so I don't know why authorship isn't also copied over). I know it's possible to copy an announcement's content into a new announcement, but this also requires updating other settings (including the delay schedule), all of which introduces opportunities for mistakes. 

Second, there needs to be a way to save an announcement as a draft or have the option to publish/unpublish announcements like most other content in Canvas. I have a handful of announcements I don't always need to make each semester but there's currently no where to save these without them eventually being sent to students (I have made the mistake multiple times of setting the "delay until" date way into the future, only to forget about it and have an unfinished or irrelevant announcement sent to students). 

I really hope these changes are made in the upcoming redesign.

[CindiKerns]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for bringing these requests back to the conversation! I agree, my faculty have been asking for this functionality since 2013. Delay posting is not a helpful replacement for draft status.

[AlisonValier]

I am having the same issue. I've been revising my messages and adjusting them (starting with a template from another course) to ensure they are in good shape for the 2022 launch of the course. However, all of them, except 1 has a "U" instead of my picture. I've actually adjusted many of them and personalized them for this year so I don't know why the system retains the "U." I realize a long shot, but are there any updates on this issue?

Thanks!

Alison

[lshulman]

I believe the "U" stands for "unknown author". That happens to me when I "copy" an announcement from another course. 

Best to recreate (from scratch/ as a NEW announcement) the announcement in each course site if you want your name to be indicated as the author. You can do this more easily by manually copying the text and pasting into the new announcement rather than use the "copy" option built into Canvas.

I keep a master list of announcements to reuse as a "notepad" file on my computer. 

But, tell me, if you are including announcements when you do a course copy from a previous semester, how do you keep all the announcements from being visible at once? Don't you want to release announcements at a specified time during the semester? I find it to be more work to edit each announcement after the copy vs. recreate them one by one as needed from my master file (or even by copy and paste of text from past course site). You'd have to edit them ALL at once time, even if only to change the "delay" date as desired.

[CindiKerns]

I agree that copying announcements can be problematic. But copy/paste doesn't really solve the problem. If there is a link in the announcement to a location in the course like a Page or an Assignment that won't be updated when you copy/paste and students will be directed to a course they do not have access to. In that case, it's better to import the announcements so that the links are updated. Ideally they would arrive in the new course as "drafts" or "unpublished" so that they are unavailable to students until you are ready. 

[mphelps1]

If you use a Canvas Page(s) to keep a master copy of your announcement, all the internal course links will update/carry over when you copy it into the next course. So copying and pasting from a master copy that is a Canvas Page (I have an unpublished module just for announcement pages) will retain course links. I find this an excellent workaround for the lack of announcement drafts. 

[CindiKerns]

That's an excellent workaround but still requires copying/pasting. Draft Announcements would be more efficient, and by alleviating this administrative task faculty would feel heard which would improve client relations. 

[Nancy_Webb_CCSF]

Hi @lshulman ,

If you have delay dates in the original posts, and you choose for events and due dates to be adjusted when importing, they will update to new semester dates and hopefully be not so far off.  I think it's essential to always use a delay date, even if it is just 5 minutes in the future.  And then, close to the release you can copy what's in the post to a new post and delete the original to get your picture rather than U.  If you have links to something in the course, or images, that's a good way to get the correct URLs.  If you don't, then copying from a master document is a great way to do it.  We use Cidilabs tools to adjust all the dates on one page.

Those who aren't familiar with importing announcements sometimes don't realize they will all be immediately visible to students without a delay date.

Another tip, it's important to not just remove a delay date to force it to post, but to set it to the current date. Otherwise, the original written date becomes the date of the post.

And I just found this known issue, hope it gets fixed soon: [OPEN] Delayed announcements were not posted on expected date and time set - Instructure Community (...

[lshulman]

Good advice regarding the value of having a "delay" date set and adjusting the dates when importing from a previous course. 

When these announcements are imported as you describe, does it then indicate the original author rather than the "U"?

[Nancy_Webb_CCSF]

Hi @lshulman, importing always has U as the author.

Maybe we should have an Idea that if someone edits an announcement, perhaps with or without a U, it should enter the editor as the author.  Perhaps there are some occasions when you don't want that to happen, but seems it might ameliorate this issue.

[AlisonValier]

All,

Thank you for the discussion. These are all great tips and strategies. I use the import function because I do post a lot of links and documents in my announcements. However, I see the benefit also of having a master resource for announcements. I love the delay feature so set things up to run on schedule, which just helps me keep organized with timing of activities, etc. 

I'm not familiar with Cidlabs and will check it out. I really have been trying to make the course personalized so the Unknown "U" kind of sets me back a step. I may just copy and paste to make new announcements but I've already spent so much time refining them (without realizing this was happening). 

I've really enjoyed this discussion!

Thank you!

[jacobsc]

Many of our teachers are requesting the ability to have announcement drafts as well. This is especially important when they have imported content and want to use the same announcement agendas that they used last semester, but have to go in and manually pre-date every announcement or they all show up for the student immediately. It would be great if we could remove the date when importing, like we are able to do for assignments and have drafts waiting to be published.

[aroyal9]

One thing that I would add is that there needs to be a way to post announcements that go to e-mail after they've been moved from "draft" to published.  Currently, if you start an announcement and then use the "delay until" option as a workaround for saving it as a draft, when the time comes (or if you speed this up by going back into the announcement and remove the delay), then it will post as an announcement but it will not go out to e-mail because the system treats the announcement as already having been posted once (because it was "posted" in the future).  The only way to get around this now is to not use Canvas announcements to compose an announcement--one must compose it elsewhere (e.g. create a page or assignment or leave Canvas altogether and use a word processing program) and paste the entire thing into a new announcement and post it for viewing IMMEDIATELY.  This is really a hassle if you already have Canvas announcements open and discover that you're not quite ready to send out the announcement NOW.  I hope we finally get a fix for this!

Gwinn

[lshulman]

Curious, because I don't have this issue with "delayed" announcements. They come into my email once the date set displays them.

Maybe this is an issue for you for some other reason, but not because there is a "delay" on it.  

[Nancy_Webb_CCSF]

Hi @aroyal9 , there IS a way to have an emailed notification when moving from "draft" to published.  Instead of removing the delay until date, instead change the delay to today's date, choosing a time five or ten minutes (or more) in the future.  That will send email notifications of the announcement to those who've chosen to receive email notifications.

[aroyal9]

Thanks, @Nancy_Webb_CCSF for the response.  I'll give it a try and see what happens--it can't be any worse than what I have now!

Gwinn

[gheinzel]

Thanks for your well thought out post on this important issue.  It’s hard for me to believe that there are so many shortcomings on this platform given how widely used it is. The issue you describe here is basically table stakes for any publishing platform yet, it’s not available .