Exciting updates in H2 2024: What’s new and what’s coming for Catalog?

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As I promised in my previous blog post, where I shared my thoughts on the development approach for Canvas Catalog, I’m now excited to reveal the roadmap for H2 2024. Canvas Catalog is undergoing a series of impactful changes, directly shaped by your feedback. These updates are being designed to enhance user experience, improve accessibility, and expand the platform’s capabilities to better serve institutions and learners.

With several key developments already underway, I’m thrilled to share what’s happening now and what’s coming next for the rest of the year.

Enhancing user experience and accessibility

Making Catalog more accessible

We are making great progress towards making Canvas Catalog fully compliant with accessibility standards. By ensuring that all users can easily navigate and engage with the platform, we are improving usability and advancing our mission to create an inclusive storefront experience.

Improving section management

We are actively focusing on improving section management based on user feedback, which indicated the need for a more intuitive and efficient process. Enhancements like better section sync are reducing friction for administrators and making course management smoother.

Streamlining the checkout experience

We are in the process of rolling out a redesigned checkout process, following your feedback that highlighted confusion in the registration flow. This new, more intuitive checkout experience is helping users move through registration more easily, leading to a smoother onboarding experience for new users.

Enhancing category management

We are simplifying category management by implementing features like pagination, reordering, and deletion safeguards based on the needs shared by our users. These improvements are making category management more user-friendly and efficient, helping administrators to manage the courses with greater ease.

Strengthening integrations and expanding features

Optimizing Salesforce integration

We are continuously enhancing our Salesforce integration to better meet your needs, especially in providing more precise syncing capabilities. You have asked for more control, so we are enabling institutions to sync only selected subcatalogs. This is reducing manual errors and giving administrators greater control over their data, streamlining the overall integration process.

Integrating with Canvas Credentials

We are currently in the process of integrating Canvas Credentials with Canvas Catalog, an exciting development that will soon allow institutions to display badges directly alongside course listings. This integration, highly requested by our users, is not only enhancing the visibility of individual learner achievements but is also bringing learning pathways into view within Canvas Catalog.

Introducing Power BI integration

Based on strong user demand, we are integrating Power BI with Canvas Catalog, giving you the ability to connect your data with Power BI for advanced visualization and reporting. Many of you have expressed the need for more data analysis tools, and this integration is directly addressing that feedback.

Driving user engagement and course discoverability

Launching the recommendation engine

We are actively working on the first version of our recommendation engine, which is designed to personalize course suggestions. While still under development, this initial version will serve as a foundational step towards helping institutions offer more relevant course options to their learners.

Modernizing and scaling Catalog’s technical infrastructure

Modernizing the admin interface

We are modernizing Catalog’s technical infrastructure, including a rewrite of the admin info page. This update is already improving development efficiency, allowing us to roll out new features and updates faster. These changes are ensuring that Canvas Catalog remains scalable and adaptable to future needs.

What these updates mean for you?

The majority of the developments we are working on in H2 2024 are driven by your feedback and are designed to transform how you use and interact with Canvas Catalog. Whether we're enhancing accessibility, streamlining user experiences, or expanding integrations, our mission is clear: to make Catalog more powerful, intuitive, and capable of meeting your evolving needs.

But we’re not stopping here. These developments are just the beginning. As we continue to roll out new features, we’re building a platform that not only meets today’s demands but anticipates tomorrow’s opportunities. With innovations like the recommendation engine, deeper integration with tools like Power BI and Canvas Credentials, and an ever-expanding feature set, we are setting the stage for a smarter, more connected learning experience.

We’re incredibly excited about the journey ahead and can’t wait to shape the future of Catalog together with you. Your input is vital to making Catalog the best it can be, and we invite you to stay engaged as we continue to grow and evolve the platform. The future of learning is bright, and we’re thrilled to be on this journey with you!