Insights: Canvas DocViewer

[kmcgee]

[14 June 2017 Update] For the most accurate information about DocViewer, please reference Canvas Release: Canvas DocViewer.

[7 June 2017 Update] Thanks for your interest in Canvas DocViewer! To best help us manage all existing feedback, please follow the feedback process explained at the end of this blog post. Please also review all existing comments to see if your concerns have already been addressed. Thank you!

As a product manager, one of the most frequent questions I am asked is: "What are you doing to improve the Crocodoc experience in Canvas?" Today I’m excited to introduce you to DocViewer, the next standard in learning management system technology.

What does DocViewer do?

DocViewer automatically converts common office documents into web-viewable and interactive learning experiences. This description probably sounds familiar because it describes most of the document functionality that already exists in Canvas. DocViewer will be available anywhere Canvas currently uses Box for content previews and Crocodoc for annotations. (Did you know that out of all five annotation types, point comments are used 49% of the time? Highlight and textbox annotations are the next favorites, followed by strikeout, drawing and area annotations.)

How is DocViewer different?

DocViewer is not that different from current functionality. DocViewer contains all the same document types and all the same annotation types, with some extra benefits!

• Modern interface that looks and feels like Canvas
• Improved performance
• Fewer clicks

More features will be coming soon, including:

• Color options
• Persistent tool colors within an annotation session (and from session to session)
• Free text annotations

Mobile Devices

For our institutions using mobile devices, annotations will continue to be supported in our mobile apps. New and improved annotation functionality will be part of our new Canvas Teacher mobile app and eventually replace the SpeedGrader app.

Why is Canvas switching to DocViewer?

We know SpeedGrader is one of the top used interfaces of Canvas where instructors spend a lot of time grading student submissions using annotated feedback. In turn, students can respond to their instructor’s feedback and may also be able to view additional feedback from other students using peer reviews.

For the past few years, we’ve recognized that relying on third-party tools can reduce the service that we can directly offer to our customers. Crocodoc has been a great product in building the interactive content experience between students and instructors in Canvas, but this product will no longer be supported by Box at the end of the year and will be replaced with a tool with reduced functionality.

The needs of our customers have unquestionably outgrown existing Crocodoc functionality—and that’s a good thing! Moving forward with DocViewer, we can:

• Improve reliability of document rendering
• Develop new features and product enhancements to drive a more functional roadmap (and adequately address annotation/document previewing feature ideas in Canvas Studio!)
• Better address hosting needs for international regions
• Enhance support for assistive technology users

DocViewer also gives us a stronger technical foundation to improve existing features, such as contribute to the next version of SpeedGrader. Implementing DocViewer functionality brings numerous future benefits to Canvas.

What do I need to do to prepare for DocViewer?

The best part about our new product is that no action is required to enable DocViewer. All Canvas accounts will be migrated to DocViewer by our engineering team. And all course history is coming, too—all previous documents and annotations will also be included so nobody will lose any of their work.

When can I use DocViewer?

Our engineering team has been working hard to ensure a seamless delivery for all customers. DocViewer will be enabled for specific environments according to the following timeline:

Beta Environment: Friday, June 2

• DocViewer will apply to all courses in all beta environments ([yourschool].beta.instructure.com).
• Official details of this new feature are included in the Canvas Beta Release Notes (2017-06-12). 
• DocViewer will have to be re-enabled each week by our engineering team, so the tools may not be be available immediately on Monday mornings.

Free-for-Teacher: Monday, June 5

• DocViewer will apply to all courses in our Free-for-Teacher account (canvas.instructure.com).
• Instructors and students can view our new document preview and annotations tools within all their courses and help us get feedback in authentic institutional settings for several weeks before making the tools available in production environments for paid accounts.

Production Environment: Monday, June 19, through Friday, June 23

• DocViewer will apply to all courses in all production environments for paid accounts, including all international regions.
• Account admins will receive an email from our Canvas Support team notifying them when DocViewer will be available in production for their specific database cluster.

How do I provide feedback about DocViewer?

We know that being able to test features is important to you as our customers. We encourage you to visit your beta environment on June 2 and take a look at the improved workflow of SpeedGrader.

Between beta and production releases, our primary concern is to provide a product that works the same way as previously used in Canvas. DocViewer has been thoroughly reviewed by our support and QA teams by replicating your coursework and grading policies. However, we know there are always going to be use cases and workflows that are unexpected, which is why we ask for your feedback and help to improve Canvas. We want to build software that makes teaching and learning as effortless as possible.

Here’s how to share your feedback:

• General Feedback: Comment in this blog and/or Beta and Production Canvas release notes, which will be posted in the Release Notes space on June 12 and June 24, respectively.

• Broken Functionality: According to your institution’s support policy, submit a support case to the Canvas Support team or through your Canvas-connected ticketing system. An example of a support case would be if your previous annotations are not showing for an assignment. We definitely want to help with that!

• Feature Enhancements: Visit https://community.canvaslms.com/community/ideas?sr=search&searchId=64a2ab3b-28c4-4824-81f8-f242e73ca... and see if an idea already exists (view the DocViewer content tag to see all related ideas). If your idea doesn’t already exist, create a new feature idea and add DocViewer as a tag.

For more help with feedback, we’ve created a new community document that explains exactly what we’re looking for with each type of feedback and how we use it. Check out our Canvas Community Feedback Guidelines document.

Thanks for your participation and enthusiasm for Canvas DocViewer!

[a_eberhard]

Will it work with large classes (n=1000+)?  The current implementation doesn't so I'm hoping...

[chun_li]

Does DocViewer have comment bank where markers can save and share frequently used comments for future use?

• Improved performance - Looking forward to this one! 

Response from  @Renee_Carney ‌ June 1, 2017 6:25 AM

Hi Chun Li

DocViewer will have the same functionality you are used to, with a few advancements.  Comment banks are not part of the advancements at this time.  You may want to add your vote and comment to Ability to Save and Copy from Frequently Used Comments in Speedgrader/Crocodoc 

Response from erinhallmark‌ Jun 1, 2017 8:09 AM
Hi, Chun,
I am not entirely aware of the plans for DocViewer, but for the initial product launch that feature is not included. I know the engineers are now going to be able to build many additional tools that they weren't able to control previously, so stand by for good things.
Thanks,
Erin

Response from  @steveb    Jun 5, 2017 9:34 AM
Hi Chun, this may not be exactly what you're asking for, but the rubric feature in SpeedGrader supports saving free form comments for reuse - https://community.canvaslms.com/community/answers/releases/blog/2017/05/31/insights-canvas-docviewer... 

[kiran_mohan]

Interesting and significant change team. A quick question I knew croc doc does not support .pages document to be viewed and annotated. Can you please advise if DocViewer supports Apple pages? 

Answer from erinhallmark‌ Jun 1, 2017 8:16 AM
Hi, Kiran,
Apple Pages is not currently supported, but it may be something that can be added in the future. Please see the section in the blog about feature enhancements as you may want to consider posting an idea for our product team.
Thanks!
Erin

[lindalee]

Most excellent and welcome news!

Will the annotation tools be available in all document types previewed by DocViewer? Or will DocViewer have the same annotation limitations as Crocodoc?

Answer from erinhallmark‌ Jun 1, 2017 8:38 AM
Hi, Linda,
DocViewer supports a variety of document and image types (yay!). Full details about DocViewer will be included in the beta rele

[ryan_corris]

Hey Deactivated user!  Changes sound great!  Thanks for the update!!!

Will the new document viewer handle pictures/images any differently in speedgrader?  Depending which browser is used the pictures come in huge.  Also last I checked, I could not annotate on pictures.  Will this be a possibility with the new doc viewer?  Thanks!

Answer from erinhallmark‌ Jun 1, 2017 9:02 AM
Hi, Ryan,
You'll love the full list of document types (and image types!) that are supported in DocViewer. Stay tune for more information in the release notes!
Erin

[rake_9]

Interested to see this.  Curious as to why it is not being treated like a regular release.

[snugent]

This looks great! Will this have the option to download the document with the annotations? 

[erinhmcmillan]

Hi, Andrew,

DocViewer is just an annotation and preview tool. It's primary use is within SpeedGrader, and as the blog notes, DocViewer helps create a foundation for SpeedGrader 2.0. So the next version of SpeedGrader may be able to provide additional support to you. We are excited about the possibilities that will come to Canvas because of DocViewer!

Erin

[mcclarens]

Hi, Will these tools be available to apply when taking a quiz? Or is there something comparable available in the quiz environment, specifically while in the Lockdown Browser.

Thank you,

Stephanie 

[erinhmcmillan]

Hi, Valerie,

DocViewer isn't like our regular features as it requires quite a bit of integration work (and also the work of migrating all your content from Crocodoc to DocViewer), so the process takes more time to make available to all customers. Because of that adjusted timeline, we wanted to put the feature into beta and make an announcement sooner so you all have more time to test if you'd like. You'll see DocViewer mentioned like a regular feature update in both the beta and production release notes coming soon.

Hope that helps!

Erin

[erinhmcmillan]

Hi, Susan,

The blog post mentions that downloading annotations is in the works and coming soon! Stay tuned for more details.

Erin

[erinhmcmillan]

Hi, Stephanie,

Currently DocViewer includes similar functionality to the Box previewer and Crocodoc, so anywhere Crocodoc and Box are in Canvas, you'll see DocViewer. DocViewer is setting the foundation to make additional changes in Canvas, so perhaps it will be implemented in other areas in the future!

Erin

[tom_gibbons]

I know it's all the same functionality plus a few advancements. But I'm wondering if one of the advancements will be to make it clear to students in the Canvas interface that they have feedback/annotations waiting for them within their document submissions. That transparency piece has been a longstanding obstacle, and since DocViewer is more closely tied into Canvas, I'm dearly hoping that the presence of inline submission feedback will be as clear to students as a comment in the SpeedGrader sidebar. 

[rgibson1]

What file types will it support?

[Chris_Hofer]

Hey there, rgibson1‌...

See this earlier response from erinhallmark‌:

https://community.canvaslms.com/community/answers/releases/blog/2017/05/31/insights-canvas-docviewer... 

[cm3644]

Excited for this! In recent Canvas workshops, a few instructors mentioned SpeedGrader pain points (timing out, too many clicks) and I personally am looking forward to a nicer, more Canvas-feeling interface.

One question - will DocViewer have that same the time-out issue? I know Crocodoc does give a warning about the time-out, but from what I hear it's easy to miss and has resulted in lost work...

[drdominee]

I am very happy to hear this. I have had so many problems with Crocodoc, especially the text comment feature. I would love to see grammatical quickmarks, such as Turnitin uses; I love those marks.

[Renee_Carney]

Cross-posting, for those interested in conversing on the topic of mobile!  Canvas DocViewer and What It Means for Mobile 

 @rseilham  Thank You for the excellent blog post!

[stacy_lambert]

Looks excellent - love speedgrader! Crocdoc was great to learn on, Doc Viewer sounds even better. Speedgrader has cut my marking time considerably.  @david_summervi1 ‌ we might need to mention this at the Canvas HUG meeting. canvashug callaghancollegewallsendcampus Think some of the other schools might need to see it's power and how this will make life easier!

[GideonWilliams]

Tested this out last night (using Surface Pro, Windows 10 and Chrome) on our beta install and was asked to leave some feedback here when I contacted Support.

Any large image submitted as an assignment is not resizing to the screen other than in Mozilla Firefox (although this does not resize to the exact location). This is a HUGE issue for us with 1-1 iPads.

Loading times for any submitted PDF and Doc are substantially slower than in Crocodoc (4-5 seconds each time on Chrome and Windows 10). With Crocodoc the file appears instantaneously, with DOCViewer you get the blue circle each time.

As yet, no way to annotate on the DOCViewer with a stylus (hoping this is one of the first improvements made) so comments restricted to Rubric and Feedback box.

[erinhmcmillan]

Hi, Gideon,

We appreciate your testing of DocViewer and hope that you find it to be an improvement for Canvas! We hope Canvas support was able to take note of your feedback for our engineers. If not, please have them take your comments and escalate them to our engineers.

Per the information noted in our blog post, Kate would prefer not to have feedback listed here directly and instead noted through the appropriate channels mentioned in Canvas Community Feedback Guidelines. (We'll remind our support friends about this process as well!)

Hope you are having a great weekend,

Erin

Response from 

Gideon Williams@ Erin Hallmark on Jun 3, 2017 6:25 AM

Sent initially to Support who then sent me here so yes, would be good to clarify this.

Response from 

Max Watson@ Erin Hallmark on Jun 7, 2017 6:45 AM

How about we "vote" on this speed issue?

I posted "DocViewer: Make it load faster" in the Canvas Studio Ideas.

[rfeilden]

I'm looking forward to testing this once our beta environment comes back online.  I'm particularly interested to see how the in-document comments work with a screen-reader, and whether or not file previews of word docs etc. pass structural information to the screen reader.  In-document comments were effectively useless in Crocodoc for screenreaders as they all appeared after the body text, and previews of documents removed all of the navigation functionality that lecturers worked hard to include in their word docs!  Fingers crossed

[sadenniston]

I'm not actually seeing anything other than crocodoc when viewing an assignment submission in beta. To make sure it wasn't to do with a previous assignment submission, I masqueraded as a student and submitted a file. Viewing this file still presented me with crocodoc. Does something need to be activated on my end? Nothing indicated such in our institution admin settings...?

Response from 

Erin Hallmark @ Sam Denniston on Jun 4, 2017 6:56 PM

Hi, Sam,

I know a handful of accounts had some caching concerns; please submit a support ticket so our support team can alert our engineers and take a look.

Thanks!

Erin

[sa_hughes]

Hi, 

I have been looking at this today. I know that this is just a beta, however I added some annotations to a document and they did not save. I assume this is not working as expected?

If this is the case are we able to see some examples of the Students view?

Thanks

Steph 

[natalie_norton1]

Hi - new interface looks great. We are doing a bit of testing to make sure existing annotations come across, and seeing a few anomalies which are being reported via support.

Few questions with regard to the student view, which I am not sure are intentional or not so thought I would post here to check!

1) I can't find a way for the student to download/print their annotated document as they had with crocodocs. Is this possible? A lot of our students like to do this

2) When masquerading as a student they seem to have the annotation tools available to them - is this intentional?

3) Students seem to have the ability to reply to annotated comments (not just speedgrader) - does this trigger any kind of notification to staff? Otherwise I am not sure staff would know they had commented unless they happened to go back in. Much as feedback dialogue can be useful, staff may not want this option for students on every comment as it would be too time consuming. Is it possible to disable?

Thank you!

[shane_ohara]

This is excellent news! I cannot wait to see it replace Crocodoc....

Shane

[natalie_norton1]

Really like the new interface but did come across a few errors in testing today which we have reported to support. We have had notification that we are due to go live 14th June, and just wondered if this could be pushed back slightly until the issues are ironed out? Unfortunately I have very limited time later this week for further testing, and just have a bit of concern about going live with this in the middle of assessments until we are confident all working as expected. Would that be possible? Many thanks!

Response from  @Renee_Carney ‌ Jun 5, 2017 8:09 AM
Hi Natalie. Thank you for testing and reporting your findings to support! We appreciate you using the appropriate channel there!

I gave your CSM a heads up to your post here, but right now we're having to say that we're not accommodating any special date requests for 'go live'. The migration process occurs by cluster, and there are many different schools in each cluster. Trying to schedule a date that every school agreed on (within the cluster) would be literally impossible.

What I can say is that if we discover load issues, a serious bug, or data issues, then the dates will slide until the that issue is resolved.

[ssimpso4]

Will a full-screen option be added (as is currently supported via Crocodoc) in the file previewer?

[kblack]

Hi  @natalie_norton1 ‌ - That first point is very concerning, especially given the current inability for students to view past submissions if they re-submit an assignment, so I hope that you report that.  

However, to address points 2 and 3, that is actually true on the current Crocodoc, as well, for students.  (I just logged in now with a sample student account to be sure.) Right now, if a student replies to a comment directly within the crocodoc viewer and/or uses the annotation tools it does NOT trigger any notification to the instructor.  However, after using Canvas on my campus for some 4 years, I can tell you that I have not heard of a single instance of a faculty member reporting that a student ever used either one!  I think most students will tend to say something to an instructor through some of the more conventional methods.

[GideonWilliams]

Would be good to have this feature for all uploaded types e.g. Images...

[Renee_Carney]

Hi  @sa_hughes ‌

If you had an experience that you believe is not expected behavior, please submit a support ticket.

[JACOBSEN_C]

This document previewer is truncating the right and bottom portions of a submitted document with a fair amount of acreage in black.  Is this a known issue?  The image below should illustrate...

[Renee_Carney]

 @JACOBSEN_C ‌

Please submit this through a support ticket.  Thanks.

[f000f2p]

DocViewer works well with new documents, but for existing documents that were annotated in Speedgrader with the old tool box/Crocodoc, it seems to take quite time to load (10-20 minutes). Once the initial document is loaded, other existing documents are rendered instantly. Is it because we are testing the tool in Beta instance? Does other institutions run into the issue?

We are also interested in learning whether the annotations in existing documents are render correctly, no missing data, and so forth. Any insights/feedback is appreciated.

[natalie_norton1]

Hi - we found on some existing documents the annotations migrated fine, but in others were missing altogether (example reported)

The other issue we reported was that muting was not holding the annotations back from students (only hiding speedgrader comments). In addition after unmuting, in some cases, speedgrader comments were still not visible to students. Interested to know if others have seen similar?

[MLentini]

So first of all, I'm glad to see we'll have a tool that is maybe more stable than Crocodoc, or at least easier to update and fix when things happen. 

I'm really concerned about the roll out approach and timing. For us, the first half of the roll out period overlaps our finals week and grading period at the end of the year. If it were another part of Canvas (Pages, maybe), I wouldn't care. But making a change to the grading workflow during that time period seems like a really, really bad idea. It's not a big interface change, but at a time of maximum stress for our faculty? Eesh.

The frustrating thing is that Instructure has ways to deal with this:

• Feature Flags - in most cases, a change like this would be behind a feature flag. Flip the switch when you're ready. I know those usually spread out over months, but even allowing a two week window would work. 
• The regular every three-week update - probably doesn't solve everyone's scheduling issue, but at least it's predictable. Our faculty and students are used to things changing on that basis. 

But neither option is being utilized here, and apparently there's no flexibility in the dates. 

So I get that there's no way to schedule just one school on a particular cluster or shard, and that the likelihood of getting a day that every school on a cluster can live with is pretty close to zero. My understanding is that's why feature flags and the three week schedule were created. 

So why is this different? And if you're a Canvas admin in the same boat, what are you doing to mitigate? 

[virginia_reeves]

I'm new to Canvas and test-driving the product for my college. 

So far, none of my annotations in DocViewer have saved, except for ones left on the Test Student account (a file I've uploaded in the student view). Everything looks like it's there, but it disappears once I move to a new student and return. Anyone having this problem? Anyone have a solution?

[lindalee]

While most of the documents we've checked appear correctly in DocViewer, we've found that documents submitted through Turnitin-enabled external tool assignments are still being previewed through Crocodoc, not DocViewer.

I opened up a support ticket about this issue and received this response: "These were assignments that were submitted while Crocodoc was in place. Any submissions should display DocViewer in beta if they were submitted by a student after June 2." It's not clear from the response whether this was intended to mean that only student work submitted after June 2 will preview in DocViewer (which seems incorrect, given that most submissions do appear in DocViewer), or if the post-June 2 date is intended to mean just Turnitin LTI submissions.

Any ideas about why Turnitin submissions might be previewed differently in SpeedGrader?

Natalie Norton@ Linda J. Lee on Jun 6, 2017 4:17 AM

HI - I reported the same issue yesterday, and were told by support that they haven't sent all prior submissions through the new interface, and that they will be doing that after it is in production. I have asked for further info as this was not our understanding, and we would ideally like to test first. 

• 

  Renee Carney @ Natalie Norton on Jun 6, 2017 2:26 PM

  Please follow your support case on this one.  I have confirmed that Engineers are looking into the TII issues you are experiencing.

[natalie_norton1]

Hi  @kblack ‌ - thanks for the info!  Reported the issue with no download available (unless I have missed it!)

It would be interesting to understand more about why students have the annotation tools available. It makes me worry about a couple of things!

Firstly, is there an audit trail so we can say which annotations are given by the lecturer, so we have a definitive record of the feedback given? I know comments are tagged with the name but other marks are not - so I am not sure how an external moderator/ombudsman can tell if a student has added annotations themselves?

With regard to the comments, I think the 'reply' option on the comment boxes is far more obviously, and therefore might prompt a student to ask for clarification on a comment, for example. There is no way a lecturer would notice that, which could lead to a poor student experience as they would not get a response.   The instruction "Teachers and submitter will be notified of all comments." may cause confusion (we know it just refers to speedgrader comments but they may not!)

I appreciate these may not be new issues, and may be straying into feature request, but it would be useful to understand how to handle this as I anticipate this may come up in staff training when this goes live!

[gnoack]

At my institution, we will most likely send out an email about the change.  For most, the only change they will see is in the user-interface.  Since it's an improvement, I don't think most faculty will be unhappy, I think they will welcome the change.  I do worry about integrations and such not working, but I can't worry about that until it happens. 

[kblack]

Hello again  @natalie_norton1 ‌.  First, thanks for kind of spurring me on to more deeply look at this in our Beta instance! I admit I haven't had much time to look at it with other summer projects in full swing!  It appears that one CAN tell which annotations are done by instructor as opposed to student IF the person remembers to click on the little sheet of paper icon (for lack of a better term) that appears on the side of the document immediately after highlighting, drawing, whatever on the document. You'll see what what I mean if you highlight something. Admittedly, it's a "blink and you miss it" type of icon, but it's there....and definitely something to consider in your training.

As for why student annotation tools are there, to begin with, I'll let the Instructure folks address that, but my personal hunch is that they are trying to have as universal an experience as possible on both web-based as well as smartphone interfaces. For example, this smartphone capability is quite popular, and a reason why student annotations may be viewed as a benefit.

[shane_ohara]

 @natalie_norton1 

Did you happen to get a response about a students inability to download annotated papers using the DocViewer?

Shane

Response from  @Renee_Carney ‌ Jun 6, 2017 6:58 AM

Shane O'Hara, Natalie Norton

Sorry for the delay.  I was making sure I had the right information.

You will not see a way to download or print the annotated documents at this point.  Printing and downloading is in development.  It probably won't make production release, but it will be close to it.

• 

  Shane O'Hara@ Renee Carney on Jun 6, 2017 7:03 AM

  Okay - thank you for clarifying. Definitely a feature that is highly valuable and widely used.
  Shane

  4 of 4 people found this helpful

• 

  Brenda Adrian@ Renee Carney on Jun 6, 2017 7:29 AM

  The ability to download the annotated assignment is used here by students and faculty. I hope it returns very quickly.  

  1 of 1 people found this helpful

• 

  Natalie Norton@ Renee Carney on Jun 6, 2017 7:47 AM

  Many thanks for the additional info. This is a bit of an issue for us as it is widely used by students and we do also have processes which require us to print off copies, especially at this time of year, so really hope it is available asap! 

• 

  Ken Black @ Renee Carney on Jun 6, 2017 7:51 AM

  That is excellent news, Renee! Thanks for letting us know!

[MLentini]

I agree, I think that faculty will be happy in the long run. It's the change dropping right in the middle of finals week (when they're all in the midst of grading final papers and projects) that will cause heartburn. Super high-stress time of the year.

[Renee_Carney]

 @virginia_reeves ‌

Did you submit a support ticket when you experienced this issue?  If not, please do.

[Renee_Carney]

MLentini‌

All really good points, and trust me, we understand.  

To answer your question on why such a different schedule, the short answer is that we have a deadline to move.  We don't have the luxury of a longer transition either, but that wasn't for lack of planning.  In-fact there was some great deal of planning that went into this transition.  I know this doesn't help eliminate heartburn, and I'm sorry.  I can promise you that we are committed to a smooth transition, and our goal is that the only difference your instructors will notice is a small UI change - nothing more.

[virginia_reeves]

I did submit a support ticket. Waiting to hear…

[Jeff_F]

Under what circumstance would the student submission be named 'file.pdf' (top left corner)?  I've seen this on just a few documents that otherwise appear to be .docx files as per submitted files.

 @Renee_Carney ‌ to Jeff Ferner Jun 6, 2017 7:58 AM

You have submitted support cases on these, correct?

 @Jeff_F ‌ to  @Renee_Carney ‌ Jun 6, 2017 8:18 AM
Thanks for the gentle nudge. I just read the entire intro above.

[ehills]

Hello! Loving the new interface. Reading through a lot of comments, it sounds like there are bugs that I found that others did as well. I will submit those to support.

I do have a question. When doing anonymous peer reviews, students were not able to annotate using Crocodoc anonymously. It sounded like that was a Crocodoc limitation. Will the new document viewer support anonymous feedback in peer reviewed assignments?

Response from 

Renee Carney @ Eric Hills on Jun 7, 2017 9:35 AM

Eric Hill
DocViewer is not that different from current functionality.

So, at this point, the answer would be no.  In the establishment of the new tool we went with function parity.  You can always search the Canvas Studio to see if there is a previously submitted idea, or submit one new.

[kblack]

Hmm.  This sounds a wee bit similar to the issue that plagued Firefox and crocodoc awhile ago and is indicated in this older discussion thread.  Just out of curiosity,  @virginia_reeves ‌, try doing the same thing again, but this time purposely click anywhere outside of the comments box and see if it saves that way.  I just tried replicating your issue, and this was how I, at least, was able to replicate it not saving properly:

• Commented on a submission
• Immediately closed Speedgrader down while the insertion point was still in the comments box.

I'm not defending the behavior of the viewer, but even after the above issue with Firefox was resolved, I always, always recommended to my faculty to click anywhere away from the comments box that was just input to ensure that the comment was saved properly just to be on the safe side.  (I tell that otherwise the browser "thinks" you're still trying to edit the comment.  A somewhat technically lame excuse, but at least they remember it!)  

While testing this again just now, it seemed to be the same issue.  Any comment where I clicked away was saved just fine; any comment where I just closed Speedgrader while the cursor was still in the comment box was not.

[jfahs]

DocViewer testing in beta instance of Canvas 

Thumbs up

• Like the new look in SpeedGrader. Time will tell if performance and reliability improve 
• Having the different annotation tools (point, highlight, strikeout, free draw, and area) directly available in the menu bar is going to be a big UX plus for instructors. Less clicks and more visually attractive. 
• The Reply button is more visible in annotation comment boxes and may be more used by instructors.
• Newly uploaded Excel files will preview inline

Needs Fixing

• It appears that old Excel docs (.xls or .xlsx) that did not display in Box (spinning wheel, no message) still fail to preview in DocViewer (spinning wheel). 
• Previous Turnintin submissions in SpeedGrader display the old Box interface. Students cannot access TII in Beta so there appears to be no way to use DocViewer with new TII assignments.  

Missing

To maintain parity assuming that the option for students and instructors to download PDF's of the annotations will be available in production. This is a much needed feature that is available in Crocodoc.

Wish list

• A color palette for highlights and strike-outs would be great! Faculty do not like using red strikeouts when grading papers. It is particularly an issue in Teacher Education where red markups are taught to be avoided because they can lead to a negative meaning in feedback.
• SpeedGrader and DocViewer to grade Text Entry assignments and quiz question type: Essay Questions.

Response form 

Kate McGee @ Joe Fahs on Jun 8, 2017 10:59 AM

Thanks Joe for doing such a thorough vetting of the product. Anything that needs fixing please report to support so that we can triage and fix. 

For your list of missing: 'downloading of PDFs' don't worry this is coming soon! As well as the color palette for highlights and strike-outs.