Updates on Canvas Data 2, Data Access Platform

The content in this blog is over six months old, and the comments are closed. For the most recent product updates and discussions, you're encouraged to explore newer posts from Instructure's Product Managers.

Edina_Tipter
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
14
6213

Let’s just start in medias res because I am pretty sure that most of you are curious about not just the state of the Canvas Data 2 but also about what comes next (and why it didn’t come yet).

The questions I expect you might be wondering about are: 

  • What are the next steps after we started the early access and the actual state?
  • When will we make it available for more customers and what features will it include initially?
  • When are we planning to deprecate CD1?

Despite the temporary semi-vacuum of updates, our vision remains the same: Help institutions leverage the power of data across all Canvas portfolio products and beyond to pave their ways into fact driven decision making and student success. BUT in order to achieve this, several teams have to work together—they depend on each other and coordinate the work across the product portfolio (which is BIG).

As we are still in the early access stage with 6 beta customers—and thanks to the precious feedback we received from the institutions who were and still are part of this—some minor but also some major issues/blockers have been identified that we first thought we could fix, and we spent a good amount of time doing that. As time passed by, and as we also better understood the customer use cases, we took a big breath: the decision was made to re-architecture the solution to make the right technical calls for the long term. This decision enables us to deliver a reliable, stable, and scalable product while trying to be as forward- looking as possible. This decision, however, puts us back into the research stage (luckily past the midpoint already) where we are finishing off some proof of concepts. During this time we had to go through and learn some hard lessons. One of them is that the development/product team went over some difficult periods and was destabilized—we lost some key individuals—but most importantly these events have triggered improvements that we put in place on both the product side and technical level. Now we are confident in the future and expect a quick spin-off going forward. We believe in relentless improvement and learning from the past.

At the moment, we are focusing all of our efforts on designing an adequate solution and delivering it as soon as possible. There is no week where this task is not discussed, evaluated or monitored. As part of our learning curve, we also do not want to commit to things before they are evaluated from a feasibility point of view. Therefore, the timeline that everybody is looking for, including features, will come out in a few weeks. Keep an eye out for the next blog post mid October, that will reveal a lot more about the future plans including adding more customers to the already existing early access/beta cohort.

Last but not least, as a sign of listening to the voice of the customer—listening to you—we realized that previous communication might have given the impression that we plan the deprecation of CD1 within 6 months from the CD2 beta release. Let me clarify that we will try to accommodate your needs and find the right balance and give enough time for migrating your data and setting your systems up for CD2. We will link this timeline to the General Availability of the product and not the beta itself. In the meantime, as most of you already know, here you can find the CD2 schema mapping we are providing for your convenience and to enable you with a smoother transition.

All I can say is that we really appreciate your patience, and we are sure we will make you happy, so keep an eye out for the next updates.

The content in this blog is over six months old, and the comments are closed. For the most recent product updates and discussions, you're encouraged to explore newer posts from Instructure's Product Managers.

14 Comments
Jeff_F
Community Coach
Community Coach

The update is appreciated. 

For the OCT update, if able, please include info on the replacement of the CD1 Requests table  along with the new CD2 custom_data topic/table.

gary
Community Explorer

Very grateful for the update.

Looks like the requests table will not be included in CD2?

Edina_Tipter
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Author

Hi @gary ,

We are planning to include requests as well since we have it in scope to cover the full CD1 use case in an improved fashion but likely it will not be in the first release: the reason being to be able to give customers a product that they can start using as soon as possible. Thus, as Canvas LMS data already represents value, we would like you to able to leverage it even if the "requests" is in progress.

Does this answer your concern?

gary
Community Explorer

Yes, thank you!

strunkca
Community Member

Hello!

Are there any new updates to  the timeline of when CD2 will be available for school districts?

Thank you for any information that you can provide at this time.

Edina_Tipter
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Author

Hi @strunkca ,

This is the latest blog post and update about the CD2 which contains a high level timeline as well that you might want to check.

But to answer your question here as well, the GA is planned in the second half of 2022 (end of Q3/beginning of Q4) preceded by an on open beta. I will share more details as soon as available.

Coming up next: sharing in a few days the draft API spec and I would be happy to get your feedback as well.

I hope this helps.

strunkca
Community Member

Hello!!

Do we know if the Canvas Data 2 Public Beta Schema are available to pull from Canvas yet, or is the spreadsheet included in this blog post just a plan of what you have moving forward?

If we want to be apart of the Beta Testing for CD2, how do we get access to that? Our district is so excited about this initiative and want to be a part of it as soon as possible.

Thank you so much for this information!

Edina_Tipter
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Author

Hi @strunkca ,

This is the most recent blog post about the Canvas Data 2 (CD2) in which you can find a link to the DRAFT API spec which contains the new schema. This document is still subject to change and improvements including the schema but by now, it is very close to being finalised. The spreadsheet mentioned in this post will soon be removed from the public as it is no longer up to date. We would like the API spec to be the single source of reference regarding CD2.

The Beta testing is planned to start in the second half of the year and you can sign up by notifying your CSM.

Should you have further questions, I am happy to help! 🙂

GaneshUbhare
Community Explorer

Hi Edina,

Our developers have written some integrations using CD1. Going forward after 31st December will those integrations work?

Is it mandatory to migrate to CD2 after 31st December 2023?

Can you let me know

Thanks

 

Edina_Tipter
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Author

Hi @GaneshUbhare ,

The expectations are that customers transition to CD2 by the 31st of December, 2023 because this is when we plan to remove CD1 access and your integrations will stop working.

This is a good summary on how to start in case you haven't seen it: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Data-and-Analytics-Group/Mastering-Canvas-Data-2-Unleash-the-Powe...

Should you have further questions in terms of transition timelines you can also reach out to your CSM.

Hope this helps.

 

GaneshUbhare
Community Explorer

Hi Edina,

Thanks very much for the clarification

Have a lovely day

bfelix
Community Participant

Hi @Edina_Tipter we would LOVE to move to CD2, but are currently blocked because of issues around missing data (a ticket has been open for quite some time now and we're not hearing much in terms of any progress). Is it safe to assume that we will not be forced to move if there is no timely resolution to this issue?

 

GaneshUbhare
Community Explorer

Hi Edina,

Good evening.

Just wanted to clarify following 

Any existing integrations written by our IT department in relation to update data in the live instance won't get affected isn't it?

our IT dept is using following API guidelines to do the CRUD transactions in Live.

https://canvas.instructure.com/doc/api/

The CD1-CD2 API'S are presumably different set of API's meant only for reporting and analytics purposes. I will appreciate if you could kindly clarify this

Thanks

 

 

 

Edina_Tipter
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Author

Hi @GaneshUbhare ,

We are deprecating this set of API's https://portal.inshosteddata.com/docs/api which will not render results but throw an error past the sunset date which is 31 December, 2023. This set of operations will be replaced by CD2 (see specification). The 2 set of API's (CD1 respectively CD2) have completely different endpoints and workflow, yet data parity is assured.

From the link you provided you are leveraging Canvas API's and those won't be affected by the change I was blogging about.

Hope this helps.

Edina