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

matekiss
Instructure
Instructure
12
1843

Canvas.png

 

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!

12 Comments
jsowalsk
Community Coach
Community Coach

@matekiss Looking forward to seeing these enhancements. 😀 Just a point I would like to remind you of if we could have extended time in beta to test these features along with making sure there are release notes for them that would be greatly appreciated.

matekiss
Instructure
Instructure
Author

Hi @jsowalsk ,

I’m glad to hear you're looking forward to the upcoming enhancements 😊

I can assure you that we will provide ample time for beta testing, allowing thorough evaluation of the new features before they are officially rolled out. Additionally, we’ve aligned closely with the Documentation team over the last few weeks, so you can expect release notes for all features in beta moving forward.

I’ll also be making regular announcements on the Product blog once any of these features are in Beta, and I plan to share surveys during the beta phase so you can provide feedback and share your thoughts while testing.

Please feel free to reach out if you have any further thoughts or suggestions!

jsowalsk
Community Coach
Community Coach

Wonderful, thank you @matekiss.

hechla
Community Participant

Thank you @matekiss. I am also looking forward to these enhancements in Catalog. 

makraft
Community Contributor

Thanks for these updates. I'm happy to see Catalog getting some long needed attention and improvements. As you move forward with this work, where do the initiatives Kata started fit in? Are you still working on them?

matekiss
Instructure
Instructure
Author

Hi @makraft,

Thank you for your message, and I’m glad to hear that you’re happy with the recent updates! We are indeed committed to giving Catalog the attention and improvements it deserves.

Regarding the initiatives Kata started, I want to assure you that these are still very much on our radar. In fact, I’ve been in discussions with Stephen this week, and we’ve planned to sit down together in November to explore your ideas, including the user-defined fields.

We’re looking forward to ensuring that these initiatives align with the broader improvements we’re making and continue to deliver value to you.

Please feel free to reach out if you have any further questions or additional feedback!

jsowalsk
Community Coach
Community Coach

@matekiss Will there be any opportunities to provide our thoughts by a survey/ranking of what features we want/looking for?

PollyNelson
Community Member

Hi @matekiss I've been in touch with Instructure support about the 'redesigned checkout process, following your feedback that highlighted confusion in the registration flow'. As we are having issues with this at the moment and I've queried with support how we can adjust a particular page that's causing significant confusion. However they were not able to help. I've checked the roadmap and there's no longer a mention of this for 2024 and nothing I can see for Catalog in 2025 yet. Do you have a timeframe for rollout of this please, and/or any info on what it will contain? We'd be really keen to see the enhancements and the streamlined checkout flow, and would be very happy to test this out in beta as soon as possible as we're finding we can't really use live Catalog at the moment due to the confusion in the registration flow when new users check out. Thanks in advance, Polly

matekiss
Instructure
Instructure
Author

Hi @PollyNelson 

Thank you for bringing this up and for sharing your detailed feedback. I completely understand how the confusion in the registration flow has been affecting your experience with Catalog, and I truly appreciate your patience as we work towards a solution.

The good news is that the redesigned checkout process, which addresses many of the challenges raised by you is already in the testing phase. We’re on track to make it available in the Beta instance in approximately three weeks. This update is specifically focused on creating a more intuitive and streamlined user experience, with clear improvements in the registration and checkout flow.

hechla
Community Participant

Hello @matekiss,

One issue that's come up for us is not knowing what course a new user had clicked through to get to the registration screen.  In the new redesigned checkout process, will there be any kind of "abandoned cart" notification/report/etc.? Something that both maybe emails the new user that they've left something in their cart AND allows us to see a report of all "abandoned carts" (what user and what course(s) are in their cart)? 

Thanks, Adam

PollyNelson
Community Member

@matekiss that is fantastic news. Thanks so much for getting back to me, really keen to start testing that out in Beta please keep us posted.

matekiss
Instructure
Instructure
Author

Hi @hechla.

Thank you for sharing this insight, it's a great point!

At the moment, the primary focus of the redesigned checkout process has been to ensure new users aren't confused by accessing Catalog before they’ve finalized their email confirmation. However, your feedback highlights an excellent opportunity to enhance both the user experience and administrative reporting.

Regarding abandoned carts, I’ve added this idea to our backlog for future consideration. The potential to email users who leave items in their cart and provide administrators with a report on abandoned carts aligns well with our goals of improving conversion and visibility.

As we prioritize upcoming improvements, I’ll make sure this is discussed further with the team. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts—it’s insights like this that help us continue refining the platform!

Best,
Máté