Adjust all assignment and quiz dates on a single page

[harris60]

The Problem:

Managing dates one item at a time is tedious when you are planning an entire semester. This is true for new classes, but also for existing classes since the ability to globally adjust imported dates never works for the way my institution designs new semesters.

I would like a spreadsheet format that shows all date related events on one page. I could then set up all events and synchronize them where necessary. This could be an online form, or the ability to download a csv template and reupload the dates.

I have attached a simplified snapshot of this kind of spreadsheet.

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

Please read through the Ready Release Notes (2020-04-18) 

[lbouthillier]

 @James ​, thanks for the quick response!  I see....the sheet appears totally blank at first, no scripts are accessible, and the Canvas menu item does not appear. Looks empty....UNTIL I made a copy. The copy has the Canvas menu item. 

Thanks!

[harris60]

I see that this is marked Archived. Does that mean that it failed the vote process? Or just that it is waiting for next steps?

As the original idea creator, I am happy that it received such a great workaround and 193 votes. However, since this workaround is not actually part of Canvas my institution does not support it (does not allow tokens for security reasons).

Does the community still feel a need for this, or is the perception that the workaround solves the problem?

p.s. I would argue that active community members are a bit more adventurous than average. I mean no slight to the excellent work that has already been done. However, I suspect a solution that is 'baked-in' to Canvas would be more accessible to more instructors.

[James]

harris60,

I think it got archived because of a response from Jason Sparks to you on November 27.

A bulk date management tool is a larger project through the entire platform and something we may consider for a larger project at a later date. I do understand the need, so know this is know [sic] falling on deaf ears.

[harris60]

Thanks,

You know, if only I could read I guess I could answer my own questions (grin).

I appreciate you pointing it out to me. I must have missed that one in the flurry of posts,

Michael

[James]

Normally, there's a formal announcement of archiving or an official response at the top that is clear what they're doing. This one was buried in all the comments and I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't searched for "archived".

[ann_culligan]

Thank you so much for this!

[ezaurova]

I don't know if you know the answer to this, but with the new spreadsheet interface, it doesn't seem to configure for me.  I enter the domain and the API access token on the Configuration screen, but then when I go to Specify Course, I just keep getting redirected to the Configuration screen.  I used your first spreadsheet just fine, and loved it.  I can't figure out why it's not working now.  Hoping you've come across this problem before.

[ahardesty]

Since we can no longer vote on this, I would just like to comment that this feature would be a big help for us. We have a lot of templates that we work with and being able to shift all dates at once in the template (rather than having to shift them when the course is copied into each course) would save a lot of time. Thanks for suggesting!

[bsr]

Ditto. I've been chasing this topic from one archived suggestion to another, and I missed the vote on all of them (so far). This is a HUGE issue for me. I've got over 60 assignments in a course, and it is very frustrating to have to navigate down and back through multiple levels over and over again just to update the dates. Several folks have posted screenshots from other systems that do exactly what we need here: just change the dates directly from the assignments list. Clearly, it can be done!

[James]

 @ezaurova ​, sorry I missed this when it came through. Have you tried downloading a new version of the spreadsheet? Google made some changes to their API's that are going to take effect in 2016 and I've rewritten some of the code in preparation for that.

Someone else mentioned a similar error, but I don't remember what the resolution was. You should be getting a confirmation when you put in your token, if you're not, then it's not registering that step and so that's why it keeps on going back to it. You should be able to paste a URL into the instance box and let it pick it out (maybe, this software might be before I implemented that feature).

You also might be able to go into the script editor and press Ctrl-Enter when that happens to see a log. I honestly don't remember what gets logged anymore and it's been a while since I've looked at this script.