SOMETHING at all to help with Discussion drafts.

[willkessner]

I'm a student, and I've just had to write a response to a discussion THREE TIMES (so far, haven't submitted yet), and there has been nothing to prevent the loss of my draft. I get that it may be hard to implement a draft saving feature (but not too hard, it is on tests), but at the very least could we get a "this page has contents that might not be saved, do you want to navigate away?" box. It would definitely be ACCURATE, and would be VERY useful. Sorry for my use of caps, I just really think that it is necessary to emphasize how easy it would be to prevent a student from losing 10-50 minutes of work, just by accidentally clicking on one of the MANY redirects on a page while contributing to a discussion. If anybody is seeing that, thanks for considering I guess. Anyways, time to (hopefully) write AND submit my response now, god forbid it gets lost again.

[Stef_retired]

@willkessner 

Thanks for sharing this suggestion. The New Rich Content Editor (RCE) has a built-in auto-save capability, and you can read more about it in the View Auto-Saved Content section of How do I add and modify text in the New Rich Conte... - Canvas Community . It sounds like your school may not yet have turned on the New Rich Content Editor in its courses.

You'll be pleased to know that it will be turned on by default for all schools in mid-January 2021; in other words, at that time it will become the only RCE.

Since this functionality has already been developed, we've archived the idea.

[jcmarble]

I don't know if it's something with my school's configuration or version, but the auto-save/restore feature doesn't appear to be working on discussion boards with the rich text editor.

I've just lost hours of work because of this. I submitted a canvas ticket, and I was linked to this: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Auto-Save-in-Rich-Content-Editor/idi-p/325250/....

[Stef_retired]

@jcmarble  The idea to which you were linked was completed in early 2020, and the View Auto-Saved Content section of  How do I add and modify text in the Rich Content E...  explains how the autosave feature works. Please note the instructions and caveats listed there:

If you reload or navigate away from a page while editing content in the Rich Content Editor, Canvas automatically saves your content in the browser cache for up to one day. When you reload the page or navigate back to the page you were editing, Canvas displays a message indicating that auto-saved content exists. You can preview the content, discard the content, or load the content into the Rich Content Editor.

• Auto-saved content is not a guaranteed feature and may not save content in certain situations.
• The amount of local storage available may vary depending on which browser you use.
• Auto-saved content is only available on pages that only include one Rich Content Editor window.
• Auto-saved content is only available in the same browser and computer you were using when you created the original content.

[jcmarble]

This tool feels inadequate and unreliable. A tool similar to the quiz input fields, where an active draft is saved every couple minutes, would be ideal.