New Admin & Sub Accounts

[ravmitterhoff]

What is the procedure for logging in the first time to a new canvas application?

1. I see the admin is user@example.com. Should I change that to my email as the administrator and that will be my user  or create a new admin user for myself?

2. Should I immediately create a sub-account to create courses or just stick with the highest level admin account? In the mean time I don't think I need sub-accounts as an organizational tool, I just want to know what the best method is.

[kona]

ravmitterhoff, I'm not 100% sure of the answers to your questions so I've shared them with the https://community.canvaslms.com/groups/admins?sr=search&searchId=357f1618-924e-46af-855c-110c0be393e...‌ and https://community.canvaslms.com/groups/canvas-developers?sr=search&searchId=e2e42d4c-57ee-43dd-9ed2-...‌ groups in the Community. These are the groups that deal more with the type of questions you are having and you might also consider joining these groups to gain access to their information and resources. 

I can share that I'm a Canvas Admin (paid version of Canvas) and that I have my own account that was added to Canvas. In addition, every admin at our school has their own individual account that they use, but Admin level access/privileges. 

For your question about sub-accounts it really depends on what you're going to do with this Canvas environment and if you'll have different types of courses that might need different overall settings and/or if you'll have specific people that will need admin level access only to specific types of courses. We are a relatively small school - around 2600 students - and we didn't start with using subgroups. We just dumped everyone in to the main environment. Then, a few years later, we determined a need for some subgroups and were easily (granted I wasn't the one that personally did it!) able to add specific courses to different subgroups. 

Hope this helps!

[rake_9]

If I recall, we were asked what address to use for the first admin account.  That person logged in and created additional admin accounts for the other people who would need them.  I would think that if the original admin email isn't in a useful pattern, you could delete it after you create ones that are useful.

As Kona noted, there probably isn't a requirement to use sub-accounts; it depends on whether you need them or not.  They can be use if you need different branding for different courses (we don't). They can also be used to sort different academic courses into departments that match your SIS structures (we rely on this to help keep track of different iterations of the same course across terms and years).  They can also be used to grant access to a group of courses to staff members who need to work with those courses but not others (we rely on this).

I have a hard time thinking about any ed tech system without some sort of org structure.  A good naming convention is useful, but it can only go so far.  But then again, I work for a behemoth university. 😉

[stuart_ryan]

I think Kona and Valerie have covered off your first question perfectly, so I will throw in my two cents for the second one having done the install at our University. 

We had some good advice from our Implementation guru at Instructure to take a step back and plan a little before we jumped too far in.

We tried to look at what we needed today, and where we thought the system could be in 12, 24, and 36 months time. We took into account the factors such as dissemination of permissions, segmenting data in 'test' sub accounts from 'production' sub accounts, and (for us) how we might map data back to our external systems (most specifically our other reporting systems).

What we learned from this process was, for our instance, having a sub-account specifically designated for 'testing' and course design, proved to be great to segment the data out from 'pre-production' courses, and those that were already running.

I think it largely depends on how many courses you are running, and as Kona and Valerie mentioned, whether or not you need to use some of the (rather awesome) features they provide. 

Could you possibly tell us a little more about your environment and we might be able to give you some more targeted tips and thoughts?

Stuart

[ravmitterhoff]

Now I have a new strange problem with this. Check this out https://community.canvaslms.com/thread/21224-why-do-i-have-two-accounts