Warning when importing assignments with the same name as existing to avoid overwriting

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(6)

Hi,

I am an instructor and recently had a Canvas experience that cost me a few hours of extra work and a lot of headache.  I was trying to import a final exam quiz from a previous semester, but accidentally imported all quizzes from the previous semester, which included a midterm quiz. This midterm quiz then automatically replaced my existing midterm quiz which students have already taken, without any warning. After contacting the school IT team and searching online, I realized that this is a non-reversible action and the only thing I could do is to recreate the previous quiz.  I then had to spend hours to clean up and restore the previous midterm quiz since students have already taken it.  However, this incident could have been prevented with a simple pop-up window with a warning message. 

Here's my suggestion: When importing Canvas quiz/assignments, if the quiz/assignment to be imported has the same name as an existing quiz/assignment, there should be a pop-up window asking the user whether they wanted to replace an existing quiz/assignment with the same name. This will prevent the user from accidentally replacing an existing quiz/assignment, especially since this action is non-reversible. 

Thank you!

An Instructor from California State University, Northridge 

6 Comments
Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Status changed to: Moderating

@YanboJin 

I'm sorry that you encountered this poor experience in the import process. New Quizzes are predicated on the assignment content type, so we've modified this idea slightly to incorporate that. (Our product teams are no longer developing new functionality on the code base for Classic Quizzes, which is scheduled for deprecation.) As your suggestion moves forward for broader discussion, you might be interested in supporting this closely related idea:  Import Course Content should always be non-destruc...

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Status changed to: Open
 
Nancy_Webb_CCSF
Community Champion

I really like this idea.  Every semester we have instructors who unknowingly overwrite content, and if the edits had been done at a time where going to Beta or Test doesn't help, there's no way to get the content back once it's overwritten.  It would take a little programming, but it should be relatively easy to check if the ID number of the quiz, assignment, page etc. already exists in the course, to pop-up with a warning that items will be overwritten with a chance to cancel.  Any item can be overwritten with Import or Copy to, not just assignments.

Please also vote on this idea:  Undo Course Imports - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

emcgee123
Community Explorer

I agree! We recently had a professor accidentally overwrite a quiz students had already taken, thinking she would get a second copy of the quiz to modify. I agree that a simple dialog box warning that the item will be overwritten (applying to any possibly overwritten items, not just quizzes) would be really helpful for our instructors.

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Comments from Instructure

@YanboJin  The upcoming 12-15-2021 deploy will initiate a warning message about overwriting existing content as part of course import processes in Assignments and Course Settings. Will this enhancement to the course import process address the issue raised in your idea?

 

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.