Deploy Notes, Meet the Release Notes—Upcoming Changes to the Canvas Releases Page

[erinhmcmillan]

With Canvas teams managing both deploys and releases, our recent release resources survey helped us take a litmus test about what admins and instructors are currently feeling. More importantly, we want to know what resources you’re using and why. A sincere THANK YOU to those of you who took the time to share your thoughts with us. Stay tuned for a few additional posts that explain some immediate changes we’ve made.

We regularly receive comments about how hard it is for everyone to keep up with Canvas changes in multiple locations. As noted in the recent survey: 

We are not full-time tech people -- and couldn’t care less what the difference is between a deploy and a release. 

I am frustrated and tired of fooling with your complex community system where I can't find what I need..  Just give me a list of ALL the system changes for that month in one place, dates it will happen, and links to more information -- that's all I need.

I need release notes as a single space to find things. It’s getting a little harder to follow, now with different sites for deploys, releases, etc. Generally get the product blog highlights from my CSM.

There are many places to go.  i.e. I have to do a lot of clicking and read many various pages to read all the updates. I suppose some people might not have the time for all this.

(If you’re still confused about the differences between deploys and releases… that’s a post for another day.)

Meanwhile, based on customer feedback, we agreed that the new design of the Canvas Releases page could use some additional updating. It’s a step forward toward our ultimate goal of simplification (additional teams in the company are also exploring streamline objectives, which we’ll announce as they are available).

Canvas Product Release Changes

On September 17, the Canvas Product Releases page will be repurposed with the following changes:

• Deploy notes will still exist, but they’ll be placed in the same location as releases
• The Releases page will be redesigned to display the last two releases and the last two deploys in chronological order, complete with a bulleted summary of updates
• Feature Previews are grouped together within the notes to better define default features vs optional features
• The date of each release or deploy includes a link to the full notes, which contains links to all supported resources (e.g. screencasts, user summaries, idea conversations, known issues)
• Previous updates can be viewed in the release archive, which will also include information about all archived deploys as well
• Release updates for feature previews in active development user groups are noted in the sidebar (this change has already been implemented in the page)

Release page mockup

Subscriptions—Simplified

Another feedback item we’ve heard is subscribing to the notes. With this change, you only need to subscribe to the Canvas Product Releases page. No longer do you need to subscribe to the deploys page, too. 

We’ve also made it easy peasy: click the Subscribe button located directly in the page. (Did you see it in the image above!?) This change is live right now in the Canvas Releases page if you aren’t already subscribed and want to test it out.

Subscribing to the notes means that you’ll be notified when release or deploy notes are created and when they are updated. As comments are not allowed directly in the notes, you won’t receive updates about comments unless you specifically subscribe to a related Q&A feature thread.

If you need a refresher on the various notification and subscription options in the Community, check out Subscriptions and Notifications in the Canvas Community.

Let us know your thoughts about this change, coming September 17!