Catalog roadmap in 2021

[zsgoreczky]

First of all, thank you for the answers and useful feedback you provided after my previous post. We really appreciate this group’s responsiveness and valuable insights. 

As 2020 is almost over we wanted to share our Catalog plans for the first half of 2021 with you, so you can see what to expect and plan accordingly. 

1. We will need to migrate Catalog from Canvas Data 1 to Canvas Data 2. The mission of Canvas Data 2 is to enable Canvas customers to easily find, filter, and understand the variety of Canvas data in a timely manner. 
   
   
2. As Authorize.net made it public that they have deprecated and are sunsetting their SIM solution, a.k.a. the “classic” Authorize.net payment gateway, we must make a change. Their recommended upgrade path is Accept Hosted, which is offered by Payment Redirector, therefore is safe to use. The migration should be mostly painless and seamless as it consists of a few simple steps. 
   
   
3. We will handle the two login issues mentioned in the previous Catalog post. This requires changes on Canvas’ end as well, so we are working together with some of the Core Canvas engineers to improve the current experience. 
1. Checking for Canvas login automatically when accessing Catalog. 
   I know you've been asking if this will only affect out of the box workflow. As our development continues and I get a better picture of the possibilities, I will update this group. 
2. Routing users to the page they initiated login from after they login
   
4. Currently, if a course gets concluded or dropped in Canvas, this information doesn’t get passed to Catalog and it is not reflected in Analytics / Reports or other parts of the product. We will make Catalog more accurate by getting the course status from Canvas and displaying them on the UI. 
   
   
5. Currently, Catalog is not responsive and it doesn’t provide a good experience on smaller screens. We will fix this and make it work on all screen sizes. 
   
   
6. We are aware that many of you have been asking for some bigger improvements for a long time. At the end of the first half of 2021 we are planning to address one of the most frequently requested new capabilities (email customization, shopping cart, etc.) We haven’t decided yet which one as we will need to do thorough discovery to make the best decision. I will likely need the help of this awesome group to collect insights and feedback on them so you will surely hear from me about them at the beginning of the new year!

Catalog largely depends on Canvas and a great number of the above mentioned improvements do as well. It might happen that the sequence of these projects changes due to the dependencies, but we will do our best to stick to it and not to change it. 

Thank you so much again for being this active and responsive throughout the entire year. I wish you Happy Holidays and will see you in 2021.

[hernandezchrist]

Is this where we log in for assignments

[jsowalsk]

Thank you so much, @zsgoreczky!!! Will any of these be release notes? Also, is there a timeline for when these will be pushed out. I look forward to hearing how the login concept will work with non-Catalog out of the box instances.

[A00015317]

As to customized email or shopping cart?  The customized email should be pretty simple to implement and is nowhere the work of the shopping cart.  One of my developers here at USU could probably whip that out in 3 weeks or less. 

Both have been requested for over 3 years now.  It is time to quit putting it off and just do it!

[bromanski]

Thank you!  I look forward to hearing more about the improvements!

[zsgoreczky]

Hi @jsowalsk Yes, the customer facing improvements will be added to the release notes. As for the timeline, the team is getting closed to finishing off migration to Canvas Data 2. The goal is to finish the authorize.net migration by the end of January (I will send a separate post about that) and then to continue with support for dropped / concluded courses in Feb. We are also planning to work on the login improvements in Feb, however, there we have a dependency on another team, so that might change. 

[zsgoreczky]

Hi @A00015317 I understand your frustration about Catalog projects always getting postponed and I'm sorry about it. There is a dedicated team now that will do their best to deliver on the above mentioned items. I will also reach out to this group throughout the year to collect feedback and insights in order to make sure that what we build does meet your expectations. 

[bromanski]

Thank you.  I have collected a spreadsheet of requested improvements that is within our account services team and the Catalog Peers group has an extensive list that @jsowalsk has been spearheading too.

[jsowalsk]

@zsgoreczky let me know if you would like to see the list.

[jsowalsk]

@zsgoreczky Glad to hear it! Will you be able to inform us how the login information will affect each of our type of instances? Will the authorize.net thing affect people who already moved to accepted hosted?

[zsgoreczky]

Hey @jsowalsk We are working on figuring out the details of the login improvements. Can you please share a bit more information on your concerns? In your previous message you mentioned " non-Catalog out of the box instances". Could you please let me know what you mean by non-Catalog instances? By type of instances do you mean production, beta, etc.? Or something else? 

As for the authorize.net migration, if you have already moved to accept hosted, then you won't be affected. 

Thanks, 

Zsofi

[jsowalsk]

Hi @zsgoreczky ,

Regarding your question, we have the enroll button blocked/disabled until someone creates an associate account to be able to login if they are a non-UMD person. If they are a UMD person they need to login through CAS authentication before getting into Catalog. We did both of these for security reasons so we do not have any more spam accounts. We have this on our beta and production instance for Catalog. Also, UMD users just select sign in since they already have a directory ID. When non-UMD users create an associate account they come back to Catalog to login. Also, we have Instructure's captcha enabled.

Also, for authorize.net is there a way we can hook up our beta instance of Catalog to a Authorize.net sandbox account with accepted hosted so we do not push transactions to production due to audits? If so, can you let us know how to do this? Our production instance already has accepted hosted.

[zsgoreczky]

Hi @jsowalsk Thank you for sending me the information and the screenshots.

As for the authorize.net migration, we are making sure that UMD's beta catalogs point to an Authorize.net sandbox, just as you requested. 

Regarding the login improvements, they will surely work for accounts that use Canvas authentication. The engineers are checking whether we can support them in case of schools having their own authentication system. I will keep you posted about it. 

Zsofi

[jsowalsk]

Thank you. Also, will it support what we created for customization? Will the catalogs in beta stay put after a refresh with the payment gateway or will need to be reactivated? @zsgoreczky 

[laikas]

Glad to see that the shopping cart is on the list. I have been told this is coming for three years now and it is really needed. Thank you. 

[jkayew]

@zsgoreczky, from your post:

"Currently, if a course gets concluded or dropped in Canvas, this information doesn’t get passed to Catalog and it is not reflected in Analytics / Reports or other parts of the product. We will make Catalog more accurate by getting the course status from Canvas and displaying them on the UI."

This is confusing as to when Catalog recognizes drops and when it doesn't because I thought Instructure already fixed the issue last year regarding Canvas and Catalog talking to each other in both directions. 

To clarify:

- IF the student enrolls themselves, an administrator can drop them from ELMS (Canvas) and it WILL show up in Catalog Analytics/Reports.

- IF the student is MANUALLY enrolled by an administrator, then the administrator drops WILL NOT show up in Catalog Analytics/Reports?

   - I tested this one with my personal Gmail address today, and this not my experience. When I administratively/manually added my personal Gmail account from within ELMS (Canvas), it DID show up in the Catalog Analytics/Reports. It just did not have my email address included in the data.

[jsowalsk]

@zsgoreczky per Julie's comment, ELMS is UMD's name for Canvas. Here is the feature that was pushed out that we have turned on regarding syncing of Canvas and Catalog enrollments: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Catalog/Catalog-Release-Notes-2020-06-20/ta-p/259043

[zsgoreczky]

Hi @jsowalsk We are making sure that we don't break any customization with the login improvements. That's why I asked for a bit more information so we can keep on supporting existing solutions. The information and the screenshots you sent were really helpful. 

As for your question about beta catalogs and authorize.net migration, we are making changes only in the payment redirector. We are not touching Catalog itself, so even after the beta refresh, the applied changes should work. 

[jsowalsk]

Great, @zsgoreczky please let me know if you need any further information. Previously, we have had our payment gateways have an error meaning they need to be reconnected after a refresh and provide the following error -- will this not happen if we set up accepted hosted? i just want to make sure every three weeks that we do not need to redo the work of setting up the payment gateways in beta.

[jsowalsk]

@zsgoreczky Do you have any update on the above?

[zsgoreczky]

Hi @jsowalsk We are almost done with the login improvements. It will also include an option for having a 'private storefront', admins will be able to control if they want to make their Catalog's listings 'invisible' until the visitor is authenticated. We are including these improvements in the Release Notes, they will be available soon. 

[jsowalsk]

@zsgoreczky, thank you. For authenticated do you mean through SSO or through the normal out of the box login page for Catalog?

[jsowalsk]

@zsgoreczky would you be able to provide any details regarding the private storefront and the authentication process? What will the authentication process rely on? We use SSO.

[zsgoreczky]

Hi @jsowalsk It will use the mechanism of one of the login improvements we've recently introduced and is out in Beta already. We do pay attention to SSO authentication; we also use it at Instructure so it definitely gets tested every time we work on something. 

[jsowalsk]

Thank you. But, what would the private storefront look like? What is the purpose of it? Also, while I have you what is the update about setting up payment gateways in beta? We have had issues with the gateways we set up disappear due to the refresh @zsgoreczky 

[zsgoreczky]

The purpose of the private storefront is that some schools prefer not to show their courses to students who are not authenticated. It's an additional security step from their end. There will be a toggle for admins under 'Catalog info' and if the toggle is on, visitors won't see the courses listed on the main Catalog page unless they are authenticated. 

As for any payment gateway issues, please send them to your CSM. We are happy to look into what's happening there.  

[jsowalsk]

Ok, will this feature be for the whole catalog instance or can it be turned on for specific subaccounts/courses? @zsgoreczky 

[zsgoreczky]

There is going to be a toggle for this so it's up to admins whether they turn it on for their Catalog or not. 

[jsowalsk]

But, is it for the whole catalog or can it be used at subcatalogs? @zsgoreczky 

[zsgoreczky]

You will be able to set it for both catalogs and their sub-catalogs. 

[jsowalsk]

Great, thank you.

[Anne-Marie]

@zsgoreczkyfurther to your first comment in the blog

"Currently, if a course gets concluded or dropped in Canvas, this information doesn’t get passed to Catalog and it is not reflected in Analytics / Reports or other parts of the product. We will make Catalog more accurate by getting the course status from Canvas and displaying them on the UI. "

Please advise where this is in development.  We raised an issue that one of our learners/clients typed in an incorrect address during the payment process and this prevented the enrolment proceeding correctly. (The support team suggested we create a feature idea to help this in the future, as this is Catalog related I am adding it to this blog) We are able to correct this in Canvas but the reports in Catalog are incorrect.  Is there any way we can correct the Catalog reporting?  

[zsgoreczky]

Hi @Anne-Marie Support for dropped / concluded courses is out in production. As for correcting the Catalog reports, please ask the Support Team to create a ticket for the engineers, the team is happy to help to remove the incorrect enrollment from your reports.