Controlling if/when automatic course invitations are sent out?

[kchatain]

I'm looking for a way to control if/when students receive the automated course invitation from Canvas.

Question 1: Is there a way to turn off the automatic invitation when I enroll a student? I would prefer to send them an email with my own text and a link to the course.

Question 2: If I can't turn it off, is there a way to control WHEN the invitation is sent? I would prefer to enroll them ahead of time, but not confuse them about the fact that the course hasn't started yet. 

Thank you!

[hallmans · Accepted solution]

HI  @kchatain ‌

I don't know if there is a way to keep them from going out automatically, but they don't go out until after the course is published. So, you can send out the email with the link and personal verbiage and then publish the course soon after.

Steve

[kchatain]

Do you think this would work for section start dates as well? I searched the knowledge base and found out how to limit participation by section dates, but it didn't say anything about the automatic invitation.

[bneporadny]

Hi Kelly,

To answer your question about whether or not you can stop the automatic course invitations from going out is yes you can, but with a asterisk beside the yes. The asterisk beside it is because of how your automated enrollment is setup and configured. I know for my institution and how we have our automated system setup, we have the automated emails turned off. The only way someone gets an enrollment email is if they are enrolled into the course manually using the +Peoples option. 

If the automated enrollment into your course is done automatically by your institution I would recommend reaching out to your local Canvas Admins or IT staff in charge of Canvas to see what if any options they have coded for the enrollments. 

If they are using the enrollment api‌ it does have an option you can set to send the invitation out or not when enrolling students into a course.