[Announcements] Post announcements in multiple courses at once

I would like to see a feature in Canvas that allows you to create an announcement then choose multiple courses  in which you would like to see the announcement posted.  The current process is time consuming and tedious; you create the announcement then open each course and copy and paste it into each separately.
 
Note from the Community Team: We are aligning this with a very similar idea, https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/2703-common-announcement-to-all-my-classes

Added to Theme

Simplify bulk course tasks Theme Status: Identified

72 Comments
wboswell
Community Participant

I agree this is a feature we need. The direct share option available and where the user information of the person copying gets put into the copied announcement as the user posting. 

irma_manty
Community Member

Our teachers are asking the possibility to post announcements to multiple courses! It saves time and reduces waist of work

bontomasin
Community Explorer

That would be a great feature. Often, school wide announcements need to be made 5-8 times, depending on the teacher's set up. 

MelanieFarrell
Community Novice

I'm wondering what the status is on adding a feature that allows "Multicourse Announcements"? It looks like this thread dates back to 2016.

dkpst5
Community Participant

I wanted to add to this conversation that a Canvas has an issue (Canvas L2 reported it's intended behavior, but it's very counter-intuitive and not expected by teachers) that if you use the built in "copy to..." to copy an announcement from one course to another, or import them, that notifications are not sent out. A teacher must manually copy/paste the body of the announcement, or set a delayed posting, after copying the announcement, to ease their work of posting the same announcement to multiple courses.

LindaHemauer
Community Member

Could there be a way to put the same announcement in multiple courses at the same time?  It would save a lot of copy and paste time on my part into 9 separate courses.

clarkld
Community Explorer

I've been asked this quite a bit lately. Crosslisting is not feasible in every situation, but there are times when an announcement applies to multiple courses. 

I'm in agreement; this should be a feature by now. 

DustinDomangue
Community Member

It is 2021. (This thread originally requested this option in 2016.) Why hasn't this been adopted yet? This is desperately needed. It is mind-bogglingly time-consuming to post announcements across numerous courses. This is a feature that Google Classroom has long had for teachers to use.

sfrantz
Community Explorer

Indiana University has built a tool that does this locally.

Edit: They've made the tool available via github. https://github.com/indiana-university/lms-canvas-multiclassmessenger

robert_frederic
Community Explorer

I grit my teeth when I read these long (years) desired, time-saving, necessary administrative features go unheeded by Canvas.

Features like:

-global, simultaneous announcements

-creating recurring assignments

are not luxuries, they are essential tasks.

Endless copy/paste suggestions, workarounds, and custom locally implemented solutions are kluges*.

*[Kluge: workaround or quick-and-dirty solution that is clumsy, inelegant, inefficient, difficult to extend and hard to maintain.

I see a lot of requests and discussions from instructors yet I fail to see any responses from Canvas.  Does anyone have insight into how Canvas manages and prioritizes their upgrade requests?  Do Canvas developers even READ these posts?

P.S. Kudos to Indiana University and other institutions that had the wherewithal to implement local solutions.  

Thanks for letting me vent.