@JonShanahan Canvas uses start & end dates for terms, courses, and sections, as well as restricted viewing settings, to determine whether students can open published courses. If you want to set up a course now for students to be able to open at a future date, the best way is probably setting a start date in the future, restricting students from viewing the course before the start date, then publishing the course. When the start date passes, they'll be able to open the course. (If multiple sections with different start dates are in the same course, you can use the same approach with section start dates.)
See How do I change the start and end dates for a course?
