The First Step Toward Smarter Engagement in Canvas Catalog

[matekiss]

Keep Students on Track with the New Deadline Nudging Feature in Canvas Catalog

Managing online courses often comes with a familiar struggle: students missing deadlines and administrators spending hours sending out reminders. With Canvas Catalog's new Deadline Nudging feature, that changes.

This update introduces smart, automated email reminders that help students stay on top of their coursework. The goal is simple: improve completion rates while saving time for staff.

Why this matters

At many institutions, program administrators spend countless hours every week manually tracking student progress and sending follow-up emails. It’s tedious, unscalable, and not always effective. Meanwhile, students in self-paced courses often lose momentum without timely reminders.

The Deadline Nudging feature solves both problems. With a one-time setup, administrators can create and schedule emails that automatically remind students as course deadlines approach.

How it works

Administrators start by creating a personalized email template using simple variables like the student’s name, course end date, and progress level. Then, using the new Automatization menu, they configure when and how the reminders should be sent. Options include sending reminders 7, 3, or 1 day before a course ends or even customizing that timing.

Students receive a clear, personalized reminder in their inbox. At the same time, they see a dynamic countdown in their Catalog dashboard so they always know how many days they have left to finish their course.

Just the beginning

Deadline reminders are the first step in building a more complete nudging system in Catalog. Over the coming months, we plan to introduce additional nudge types including inactivity alerts, abandoned cart reminders, and course completion follow-ups. These updates are designed to provide broader support for engagement and retention across the entire learner journey.

Learn more

You can find full details in the Canvas Catalog Release Notes: July 21, 2025.

Help your learners finish what they start. Try Deadline Nudging in Canvas Catalog today.

[JamesSekcienski]

@matekiss 

This is great to see as a new feature for Canvas Catalog and that you have plans for continuing to enhance this feature. The ability to use variables in designing the automated messages is also a nice touch to personalize the communication more.

Will the ability to provide automated reminders to students also come to Canvas in the future?

[hechla]

Thank you @matekiss 

I've been testing this feature out and one thing I wasn't sure of, and didn't find in any documentation, was that the student progress is tied specifically to Modules (and their requirements).  It has nothing to do with how many assignments are in the course and whether the assignments have been completed. Or whether pages with due dates have been viewed. And I am still assuming that it's based strictly on Modules and not parts of modules. 

For example, here's a scenario.

• 1 module with 5 assignmenta
• Requirement on the module that all 5 assignments need to be completed.
• A below 50% nudge is enabled.
• Student has completed 3 of the 5 assignments (60% of the module)

Will the nudge reminder get sent or not? Is the student progress considered 60% (3 of 5 assignments in the module)? Or is the student progress 0% because the module isn't complete?   

[matekiss]

Hi @JamesSekcienski,

Thanks so much for your thoughtful comment and I’m glad to hear the new Deadline Nudging feature in Canvas Catalog resonated with you!

To your question: at this time, Canvas LMS itself does not support the same kind of automated, variable-based reminder system that we’ve introduced in Catalog. While instructors can use Canvas Alerts to set up notifications around inactivity, grades, and due dates, those are typically configured per course and don’t include the kind of personalized templates, countdowns, or multi-touch scheduling we’re now offering in Catalog.

As far as I know, there are no plans to bring the full Deadline Nudging experience into Canvas LMS. Our focus with this feature is to continue building out engagement and retention tooling specifically within Catalog. Things like inactivity nudges, abandoned cart reminders, and completion follow-ups are all on the roadmap.

That said, I appreciate your interest and am happy to pass your feedback along to the LMS product team so it’s on their radar.

If you're curious about what's coming next, you can always check our public roadmap here:
Canvas Product Roadmap

Feel free to reach out if you’d like to discuss further.

Best,
Máté

[matekiss]

Hi @hechla,

Great question, and thanks for diving into this with real examples.

You're right that nudging is based on modules and their requirements, not on individual assignments or pages themselves. The key point is this: like every part of Catalog, only the module requirements count.

So if a module has five assignments, but the requirement is to complete just one of them, then completing that one satisfies the module requirement and the student is marked as 100% complete.

If the requirement is to complete all five assignments, then each one counts as 20%. So in your scenario, if a student completes three of the five required items, their progress would be 60%. In that case, a "below 50%" nudge would not be triggered.

The system measures completion as a percentage of how many required items within the module have been completed, based solely on what is configured in the module requirements.

Best,
Máté