Is it possible to change the originator's name on imported announcements?

[dsp57]

When a course is imported from a previous one, the announcements get anonymized (i.e., the name/avatar of the originator is replaced  with a "circle U") and other help-documents indicate that students won't receive them; although, they evidently do show on the list of announcements for students to see.

Is there a way to get imported announcements to have my name associated with them, so students receive them and know who originated them?

The only thing I've been able to do is recreate them one-by-one via copy-paste, which is tedious.

[gnoack]

Are you importing them from a previous course?  My experience has been that any imported announcements, once I open and edit them and set a new post date, were changed to be associated with me and the new course. I don't know of a way to do this in bulk on import. It's one of the pains of setting up a new semester that these all have to be opened and edited.  For many of my courses, I've found it's easier to copy/paste from previous courses as the course progresses. 

[dsp57]

Yes, they are imported from a previous course.  And yes, I've changed the post date (delay posting), but that doesn't change the originator's name--it still shows the circle-U.

[gnoack · Accepted solution]

I've never noticed this before, but I have it in mine, too. It is a known issue. 

"A profile picture displaying the letter U in place of a user's profile picture indicates that an announcement was imported using a course copy, the Course Import Tool, or a blueprint course. Additionally, copied announcements do not include a posted date and time."

From: How do I use the Announcements Index Page?

It seems the only way to fix it is create a new post and copy/paste content.  I tried sending a copy of the post to myself and it still showed the U.  This would be a great feature request. 

[dsp57]

Thanks for the rely.  Well-stated and definitive. 

[bsr]

Are students not receiving imported announcements? I knew the "U" was an issue with no work-around, but I didn't know that students wouldn't receive them. After all, the dates were nicely adjusted automatically to post at the correct point in the semester. From our end, it looks like they will go out! If the default is now not to send imported announcements, what specific actions trigger an imported announcement to be sent?

[dsp57]

I can’t be certain whether they do or don’t receive them.  I’ve got enough OCD that I wanted them to know who was sending the announcement (rather than the unknown “U”).

[bsr]

Same here! I found this thread because I come back and check every semester to see if there has been a fix for the profile icon problem, because it drives me nuts. We work so hard to "create immediacy" in our courses, and then it all just gets wiped away when we import the content into a new shell.