Files (Images) Insitution Level?

[RyanHayes]

Is it possible to share stock banner/header images in a way that they are available to ALL courses? We'd like to have a collection of stock banner images that IDs or faculty can insert into the home page and other pages of their courses for consistency. Ideally the could be stored at the institution level and be available under files for ALL courses. Is this possible?

[HennyTasker1]

I've done this with an S3 (AWS) bucket or with Box. I believe you could even do it with Google Drive, but I've never done it. You can embed images hosted there in Canvas, same as images hosted within Canvas.

Here's documentation on using the Embed widget with Box https://developer.box.com/guides/embed/box-embed/

You should consider the pros and cons of doing this and consult with your school's IT/sysadmin if unclear.

[RyanHayes]

We can share a folder with images in Teams, but I am asking about within Canvas itself under "Files". Is there a way to upload files, images, or other media to an institution wide folder inside of Canvas Files. Then IDs can just insert header images from a folder right inside of Canvas that is available in every course.

By default, files is only at the course level.

[Chris_Hofer]

@RyanHayes ...

Interesting question!  Unfortunately, there's no built-in place I can think of where you'd be able to store images/files/documents, etc. in a central location that all people would have access to.  What you *could* do, though, is to create a separate Canvas course shell and put all your shared files in the "Files" area of that course.  You would then want to have an automatic enrollment process (maybe someone from your IT department ... or whoever automatically sends enrollments from your SIS to Canvas) to enroll your IDs and faculty into that course.  They would then be able to log into that course at any time and download whatever they wanted based on what you upload to the course.  Anyone who downloads files from this course would want to make sure that they upload those files to their own Canvas course(s) and then link to or embed those files/images.

I suppose you *could* use Canvas Commons to share files, and then folks could download/import those from Commons to their own course(s).  But, I was a bit hesitant to suggest this only because I realize you might want to be sharing a lot of files...and so this might be a bit of initial leg work on your end to get set up...since you may need to share files individually.  It doesn't look like *.zip files can be shared to Commons: What types of document and media files can be shar... - Instructure Community - 1792.

I hope this might help in some way.  Sing out if you have any questions.

[Jeff_F]

Hello @RyanHayes - does the faculty development team have a resource course for faculty? Course development information and links to an image repository could be placed within.

And of course the Cidilabs DesignPLUS integration has several useful features and time savers.  https://cidilabs.com/landing/design-tools/ 

[paul_fynn]

Yes you can @RyanHayes but it requires a bit of creativity.

We have a community site which is set to be institutionally accessible. i.e. anyone enrolled in our institutional instance can read anything linked from there but can't access anything not linked.  You may or may not be able to change this setting in Settings > Visibility or may need to ask your top level local Canvas team to change it.

Our template icons are stored as svg files(doesn't show up on learning analytics) and inked from there to our course level templates (I'll add the code below). 

<a title="About the Module" href="https://canvas.anglia.ac.uk/courses/42983/pages/about-the-module" data-api-endpoint="https://yourdomain/api/v1/courses/42983/pages/about-the-module" data-api-returntype="Page"> <img id="1895407" title="please click here to see the module information" src="https://yourdomain/courses/20384/files/1895407/preview" alt="module information" data-api-endpoint="yourdomain/api/v1/courses/20384/files/1895407" data-api-returntype="File" /> </a>

• About the module - is the page that the template icon points to in the course 42983 in which the icon has been deployed and is both the href and endpoint
• 895407 Img Id and src is the specific file and file location for the specific icon in the institutional access site 20384

When our faculty changes its mind about the text content of the icon, or the colour scheme, we can change this once centrally and it will appear in its new form in its next load or refresh.

Happy tinkering !

[Joel_Stevens]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for sharing this I could not work out how this was possible.

This could be a silly question as I am a new user I am just wondering how you get around the file 'number' (eg 895407) changing when your file is edited. Wouldn't any changes there would mean editing the code in each 'course' that the file appears in?

Any help much appreciated.

Joel

[paul_fynn · Accepted solution]

Not a silly question at all, @Joel_Stevens  and worth just briefly outlining how Canvas is working generally;

When content is copied over from one course to another it points back to the original file rather than creating a new one, and it appears that there is some kind of 'chain' setting which you can reveal in the API - we think this may have been causing problems as we had a spell when we changed our images but they were then broken in the mobile app. Some work was done by Canvas on New Quiz images, which seemed to resolve this at the same time.

It's easy to miss, but when you upload a file (for example when prompted to improve for accessibility), providing that you retain exactly the same file name and location, Canvas will ask you whether you want to replace the existing file (hence, I believe, retaining the original file number), or create a new file - clearly you want the former.

On a related note, we do have icons/images which point to external resources - we had a panic around recent Microsoft address changes which ceased to work, but I gather the back-room boys at Canvas have resolved this without our having to update every link (Phew!).

However we have a similar issue where we have sharepoint links and support email addresses from Canvas to various information and support points around the institution. These are now changing, and we will have to have a strategy to update existing links in the courses that are rolled forwards.

• Were I building from scratch in the future I would make sure that I used a tool such as TinyURL so that TinyURL functions as a connecting bridge between Canvas and the endpoint. If the endpoint needs to change it can then be done in TinyURL (once for each move) rather than having to change every link in Canvas.
  • Hey - wouldn't it be cool if Canvas itself could facilitate an account level interlocutory table with the canvas links on one side and the connecting links on the other side .....

[Joel_Stevens]

Thanks very much for the insight Paul - this will save as a lot of time. I will have a look around for that replace file option. And thanks for the background info it really helps me understand - the 'why'.

[paul_fynn]

Just noted this in the Roadmap, which may be relevant :- 

An institution-wide media library will allow educators to store media in a central repository that is visible to all educators within the institution, making it easy to share resources across courses.