Opening calendar within a course page from a course menu

[alexey_vdovin]

First of all I looked at the similar ideas that did not go through voting: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/3587" modifiedtitle="true" title="Individual course calendar (..., https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/7535?sr=search&searchId=f4926050-0f83-4add-8b1a-a5ab532debf2&s... and https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/2472" modifiedtitle="true" title="Link to this course's calend...and I would like to refine the idea and provide better explanations and motivation for the community. I think it does not take much time to implement the changes suggested and it will greatly improve the user experience.

Idea:

The functionality to view a calendar for a single course already exists in Canvas, but the implementation of this feature is very poor. First of all, it is not available in the main course menu, only with the side menu. Second of all, the buttons layout is different depending on the role one currently has. Please, see the screenshots provided:

 

Thirdly, clicking on any of these links would get you out of the course page, which makes it hard to come back to the course page (one can only use the "Back" button), and there is already a feature idea addressing this part of the problem, https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/12538-go-back-to-course-view-after-viewing-course-calendar.

Anyway, I consider that my solution is more elegant and possibly easier to implement. In short, I am suggesting to make a "Calendar" link inside the main course menu that would open a calendar for this specific course and, most importantly, open it within the course page (in other words the course menu should stay available), see the example given:

After implementing the suggestion one can get rid of the confusing Calendar buttons outside the course menu ("View Course Calendar" in Student view and "View Calendar" in Teachers view) and keep the interface cleaner and more understandable.

Temporary workarounds:

The functionality is already achievable using the Redirect LTI app as mentioned in the discussion at https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/2472" modifiedtitle="true" title="Link to this course's calend..., but it is slow and one needs to manually create it for every new course page.

There is also a workaround suggested in https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/7535?sr=search&searchId=f4926050-0f83-4add-8b1a-a5ab532debf2&s..., that requires some Java coding on an admin level (Not a solution for teachers).

[Stef_retired]

Thank you for sharing this idea,  @alexey_vdovin ‌, and we're delighted you've done your homework on this! Screenshots and links to archived ideas are always helpful to members deciding how and whether to vote on a particular suggestion.

With respect to (2), there is a related idea addressing the "since there is no easy way to return to the course page" aspect that is currently open for voting: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/12538-go-back-to-course-view-after-viewing-course-calendar 

[alexey_vdovin]

Great, thanks, I have added this information to my suggestion.

[GideonWilliams]

Hey  @alexey_vdovin ‌ is this something similar to what you suggested - https://community.canvaslms.com/groups/k12/blog/2016/11/15/calendars-calendars 

[alexey_vdovin]

Thank you  @GideonWilliams , I did not understand where to put your JavaScript, but I have updated the topic to mention it.

[lph]

Thank you adding this idea. The timing is perfect. My students rely on the course calendar; therefore, I decided to print out spring and start laying out how to better organize the course. I quickly found out that returning to the course was too many clicks. Imagine the high school teachers having four preps (four different courses). Too many clicks wastes time. 

Canvas should do a “click” study. If it’s more than ( x ), redesign.

[hesspe]

I voted this up, but I'm not in full agreement.  The course nav bar is already pretty long, and if a calendar link were added there, some Instructors would hide it. Rather than use the Course Nav Bar, I'd like to see the "View Course Calendar" button deployed consistently.  Of the 6 views below, only two have the view calendar button. Some don't have the button OR the view calendar link.  I'd like to see the view calendar button added to any page view which, like the 6 below, allocate space on the right for navigation widgets.   Also feel strongly there should be a way to return to the page you left when you are in the calendar.

[ProductPanda]

Comments from Instructure

As part of the new Ideas & Themes process, all ideas in Idea Conversations were reviewed by the Product Team. Any Idea that was associated with an identified theme was moved to the new Idea & Themes space. Any Idea that was not part of the move is being marked as Archived. This will preserve the history of the conversations while also letting Community members know that Instructure will not explore the request at this time.