Separate Observer Notifications

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We are currently using a tool called StudyCoach to help facilitate advising within Canvas. There is an option to add advisors as observers to each Canvas course in which their student is enrolled so they can see their grades and such. One of the advisors reached out to me explaining that they were getting overrun with notifications from their observed courses. He updated his notification preferences, however, these advisors are also instructors and sometimes students in other programs.

It would be great if notification preferences were split into roles, for example observer preferences and teacher/student preferences. That way, the users are able to specify that they don't want any observer notifications but still want specific notifications from courses in which they are enrolled as teachers or students.

I did read through the feature request allowing observers to receive notifications (https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Observer-roles-notifications/idi-p/326319#comm...), but this would take it one step further to make observer roles more feasible for current instructors of other courses.

7 Comments
Naomi
Community Team
Community Team
Status changed to: Moderating

Hi @cassidy_vela,

It's possible to adjust notification preferences for a course, perhaps that would solve for what you're looking for? For more information, check out: How do I manage notifications for a single course as a student? (The same steps can be followed for teachers and observers.) 

Naomi

cassidy_vela
Community Explorer

Thank you for responding! @Naomi 

Yes, I understand this, but the advisors are enrolled in ~50 courses when counting all of their advisees across multiple cohorts and do not want to go through each course individually.

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Status changed to: Open
 
cassidy_vela
Community Explorer

I checked the API just now and wasn't able to find any way to bulk disable notifications on an enrollment level. If this were available, that would be fantastic because having each Faculty go through one by one is currently not feasible.

lhmacDanaHall
Community Member

We are experiencing the same issue with our advisors who are also faculty members. Turning off notifications for that many courses is too time-consuming. We are also using the Observer role for our Class Deans who are now receiving notifications for every course of every student in (for example) the entire 9th grade. It would be great to be able to manage notifications by role.

audra_agnelly
Community Champion

Same issue with our case manager and other support staff. We link them to students with the regular Observer role, which will put them in dozens, sometimes hundreds of courses. Turning off notifications one-by-one is really tedious. The converse option: to opt out of everything at the account level and opt-in to announcements in the courses you want notifications in will become a problem for that teacher down the road when they are added to a new course that they do need to receive notifications for. They end up not knowing why they aren't getting notifications. I also just learned today that course notification preferences do not have the option to opt out of Inbox notifications, so messages that go to all observers still go through.

ProductPanda
Instructure
Instructure
Status changed to: Archived
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.