[Announcements] Manually set order of global announcements

Currently, global announcements are sorted by end date, with the longest running announcement at the top.

As we kick-off our semester start, we're relying heavily on announcements to communicate information to our users, and we often need to balance long-running informational messages with short-term, urgent announcements about service outages.

In order to make the more urgent announcements appear at the top of a user's dashboard, we have to repeatedly delete, and re-post the long-running announcements to move them to the bottom. This creates extra work, and extra opportunities for error when we're already under pressure. (It also causes the announcement to re-appear if someone has previously cleared it.)

Please add the ability to manually control the order of display for global announcements.

11 Comments
Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Status changed to: Open
 
ryan_munro
Community Member

The sort order of Global Announcements (<canvas>/accounts/1/settings#tab-announcements) should be reversed, displaying the newest announcements at the top.

With this change I'd also suggest moving the New Announcement button to the top.

Haidsong
Community Member

AGREE with LATEST global announcement on TOP

or better yet if user has CONTROL on positioning of announcements and can change the positioning anytime (based on which announcement needs to be emphasized or re-emphasized at the time)

rpeters3
Community Participant

In general, yes, having the most recent announcements on top AND the Create Announcement button on top is the biggest priority of mine. But also this leads me into bigger ideas for Global announcements, roughly in my order of priority:

  • ability to filter by: type of announcement, show to (audience), date ranges
  • ability to search through announcement titles and text
  • announcement templates: like many schools, many announcements get recycled, and being able to have templates to choose from when creating new announcements would be very helpful for getting things out WITHOUT overriding or copying/pasting a previous announcement (don't you all love having the "this link opens in an external window" text popping up when you copy/paste)
  • un-bury Announcements tab from living in Settings, I'm not sure how they are a "setting"
  • ability to have an "archive" of announcements in which we may need to look up announcements later, but don't want to see them when working in current announcements

Not sure if I should make this a separate feature idea....

c_murphy
Community Participant

Currently the global announcements are listed in date order, with oldest announcements listed first. It makes much more sense for the announcements be listed with the most recent first, or allow an institution to choose/flip the order? It is annoying to have to scroll to the end of the last page to view current announcements and edit them. 

Eily
Community Explorer

I could not agree more with everything here. It is hard to believe that there are no sort or filter options in the announcement creation area, and that the button is on the bottom of the page, and that you have to click to the last page to view the latest announcements.

It would be great to have the ability to dynamically re-order announcements as they will appear to users on the dashboard, have an announcement template (or even a way to schedule them like you might for a recurring item on a calendar), or at least an option to copy an existing announcement. I would love more audience options, maybe a list of subaccounts to select, similar to the roles options that are available.

Also on my wish list - I'd love to have an easy way to customize the announcement type options and colors, and to be able to add new types. And I completely agree with 'unburying' it from a submenu in the account settings, that would make a lot of sense to me. I really hope we see some new features here soon! It would be so helpful!

michelle_coots
Community Participant

Currently, the display of global announcements for users presents the one expiring the latest at the top. We would like the options to reverse this AND the ability to PIN announcements to the top. We have recently had one-day announcements that have needed to get posted and some other shorter-term announcements. We want the urgent announcement set to expire the soonest to be displayed at the top AND to have the option to PIN an announcement to the top. Thank you!

Ganelon
Community Explorer

This would amazing if this could happen. For instances where the system is having trouble this would insure that everyone has to see the message and can't just click out of it. 

Nancy_Webb_CCSF
Community Champion

This document says the newest message displays on top.  How do I create a global announcement in an accoun... - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

Global announcements display in chronological order, with the newest announcement shown at the top of the page.

Would be better to be able to choose the order, prioritize the messages to best reach students.

KristinL
Community Team
Community Team
Status changed to: New