Create appointment groups in Scheduler without Canvas sending notification to the students

0 Likes
(13)

I would love the ability to create appointment group times without it automatically generating an email to my students so I can have the appointments set but be able to talk about it with my class before it is "published."

12 Comments
Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Status changed to: Open
 
RobDitto
Community Champion

Rated 5 stars!  At our institution, we rely on the default "Notify immediately" for capacity-controlled appointment signups.  However, some signups really don't need a notification, so it would be nice to have the option.

emily_asher
Community Explorer

Please please please please fix this!  I have a placement course with 100+ students and I set up times where they can sign up for an appointment.  Every time I update, I'm flooded with "I can't make it to those times", "why do I have to meet with you", "who are you", "appointments are full what do I do", "can you stop sending these to the advisors", "leave me alone you *&!*@@**!" and "I've signed up for one of your tutoring appointments did I do it right" messages.  No offense Canvas, but it's absolutely ridiculous to have things set for an automatic notification on ANYTHING.  It would be better set for "sorry instructors, send a message to all the students if you want them to know about this".  There are times when I set up an appointment time and realize I made a mistake in it (wrong time, wrong class), yet students are already notified.  Seriously?  Who thought this was a good idea?  There are a million reasons NOT to have the automatic notification and let the instructor set it, but I honestly can't think of a single one in favor of it.  This is how much I hate the auto notifications.  🙂

sfallstrom
Community Novice

I completely agree. What's worse is if you end up having to cancel, there is another automatic notification that is forced to be sent out. I created 2 blocks - one with 40 slots, and then later another one with only 2 slots. Because of a change in a district meeting, I had to cancel the 2 slot and it sent a message to all the students saying "All appointments have been cancelled." That is pretty ridiculous. I agree with Emily Asher above, and while I see Rob mention that it is helpful, having it be opt-in, instead of no option (or opt-out) would be better. 

Please. Seriously. Please. Note, that I'm sending this comment and posting it here knowing that it won't be sent to everyone who logged into canvaslms.com... which is WAY better than the current Canvas system. 

What do we want: "No Auto Notify"  

When do we want it: "Now"  (truly, a few months ago, but I'll take now). 

jchronister
Community Member

I would love to see this feature. I would like to use our shared professoinal development Canvas course to create appointment slots with our staff member when I go out to buildings to offer tech help. We have 19 buildings and 800 staff. If I create appointments slots for one building, everyone gets an email about it. No eveyone is going to want to turn off this feature in their Canvas account, but they also don't want to get a lot of messages from me. It would be great to create appontments with an option to not send out notifications. Until this becomes an option, I don't think I can use this for making appontments ☹

 

collinsl2
Community Member

I would like to have an option to set a time in the future to have an appointment group 'go live'. For instance if I am creating an appointment group sign-up for next week, but I do not want students to begin reserving their times until tomorrow at noon - so they will all know when the sign-ups will open up. If I am not able to be at my computer at noon tomorrow it is impossible to do this currently. I would love to see this feature added. If anyone has a work around I would love to hear it.

Thank you.

JenniferTeeters
Community Novice

I agree with @collinsl2 and most of these comments.  I cannot schedule a release time for calendar sign-ups.  This forces the creator of the event to be located next to their computer when they plan to release and sometimes this is just not convenient nor practical.  We have recently started investigating other platforms because of this issue but I would love to use Canvas instead.  Please create this feature.  

AA_AdminVUB
Community Explorer

Would love to see this added. 

LindsayAdams
Community Explorer

Agreed with @collinsl2 and @JenniferTeeters -- some of our faculty have requested the ability to schedule their appointment groups to publish at a later date/time. They had this functionality with a previous online course management tool, and are unhappy losing it with Canvas.

mshphd
Community Member

I looked here to find out WHAT messaging students get about appointments and if it sends them a link to find them more easily. I could not test this out with my student view. So, hearing that other things might be happening to decrease student engagement (totally counter my goals here!) is very distressing.

RobDitto
Community Champion

@mshphd, details of how these notifications work are here:

By default they are sent immediately to students by email. What each notification contains is simple and functional. Subject lines will look like one of the following, including a parenthetical with the course name at the end:

  • "Appointment <name of appointment group> is available for signup"
  • "Appointment <name of appointment group> has been updated"
  • "Appointments for <name of appointment group> have been canceled"

With any of these subject lines, the message body will include a brief list including the applicable date(s); whether signup is individual or by course group; and the number of available timeslots as of the time of sending the notification. At the end, there's a link which, if followed, will go right to this set of appointments in the Calendar, bypassing the need to press Find Appointment and select a course. (The link seen on Syllabus for an appointment group, if available the course, works the same way.)

These student notifications have been very effective at our institution. But after the years-ago removal of a Publish-like button for this feature, we'd benefit from them being an option the builder of the appointment group could configure - hence my 5-star rating here.

ProductPanda
Instructure
Instructure
Status changed to: Archived
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