Canvas Release Notes (2018-08-04)

In this Canvas release (August 4), students can manage to-do items for all their courses using a List View Dashboard option. In DocViewer, comment replies are stacked together and can be expanded to view the entire comment thread. The Rich Content Editor supports the longdesc attribute for images. Welsh has been added as a supported language.

Gradebook Export/Import CSV files display custom columns created via the API. For moderated assignments, only final graders can excuse students from assignments in SpeedGrader. Institutions using Scheduler view an updated Scheduler interface with improved functionality.

Feature Options

For institutions using the New Gradebook, assignment columns support a minimum width of 10 px, and Gradebook Export/Import CSV files display custom columns created via the API.
For institutions using the SIS Integration Settings feature option, Grade passback requests can be managed in bulk for a course, and syncs can be scheduled to run daily. Additionally, admins can optimize the speed of grade passback by selecting the sync duration that best supports their institution.
For institutions using the new Developer Keys feature option, Developer Keys can be created to only be allowed in test environments.

External Tools (LTI)

For institutions using the Quizzes.Next LTI, the beta label has been removed from the Quiz/Test button in the Assignments page.
For institutions using Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365 LTI tools, Canvas displays a message notifying students that their submission uploads are processing.

Release notes describe upcoming Canvas functionality and are subject to change.
Follow the Canvas release notes space to be notified of updates
For all release changes, view the Release Notes Change Log
If you notice any contrary functionality compared to the outlined behavior in these notes, please file a Canvas support case according to your institution's support protocol
Other questions? View the Canvas Release Notes FAQ

Release Notes Change Log

New Features

BACK TO TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dashboard

Student To Do List View

Location to Enable Feature	N/A
Configuration Details	N/A
Affected Canvas Areas	Dashboard, Account Settings
Related APIs	Planner, Planner Note, Planner Override
Affects User Interface	Yes
Affected User Roles	Instructors, Students

Summary

The Dashboard includes an option to view all course tasks in a list format. This view is currently only available to students. In addition to displaying automatically populated graded To Do items, the List view allows instructors to add non-graded items to the To Do list and students to add their own items to the To Do items.

Change Benefit

This change helps students manage all tasks across all their courses in a user-friendly format that also allows for user customization.

Additional Details

For full details, questions, or comments about the Dashboard List View, please see the Canvas Release: Student Dashboard List View document.

List View Dashboard

Feature Idea Contributions
https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/11126-add-to-do-list-for-students-on-calender" modifiedtitle="true" title="Add "To Do" List For Students On Calendar https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/9368-to-do-list
Canvas features are always welcome to feedback. Product teams may make adjustments at any time via the Canvas Feature Idea process.
View existing dashboard feature ideas
For new ideas, please tag the idea with dashboard

Updated Features

BACK TO TABLE OF CONTENTS

Assignments

Google and Microsoft Office Assignment Submission Processing Notification

Location to Enable Feature	Account/Course Settings - External Apps Tab
Configuration Details	Google Apps LTI or Microsoft Office 365 LTI
Affected Canvas Areas	Assignments
Affects User Interface	Yes
Affected User Roles	Students

Summary

Students can navigate away from the assignment submission page without disrupting a file upload for Microsoft Office 365 or Google Drive file submissions. Canvas displays a message notifying students that their submission upload is processing.

Change Benefit

This update improves assignment submission reliability for Microsoft Office 365 and Google Drive files.

External Tool LTI submission processing window

Affected User Roles & Behaviors

Students

When students upload and submit a Google or Microsoft Office 365 file to an assignment, Canvas displays a message notifying students their submission processing. Students also receive an email notification once the submission processes.

Feature Idea Contributions
Canvas features are always welcome to feedback. Product teams may make adjustments at any time via the Canvas Feature Idea process.
View existing Google Drive feature ideas | View existing Microsoft Office feature ideas
For new ideas, please tag the idea with google drive and/or office 365

Calendar

New Scheduler Workflow Enforcement

Configuration Details	Contact Customer Success Manager
Affected Canvas Areas	Scheduler (Calendar)
Permissions & Default Roles	Course Calendar - add / edit / delete events
Related APIs	Calendar Events API
Affects User Interface	Yes
Affected User Roles	Instructors, Students
Original Feature Introduction	Canvas Production Release Notes (2017-04-01)

Summary

The New Scheduler feature option has been enabled for all institutions currently using the Scheduler feature in the Calendar. Institutions using Scheduler view an updated Scheduler interface with improved functionality. Institutions not using the Scheduler will not be affected.

Change Benefit

This update allows instructors and students to more intuitively view and manage appointment groups created for a course.

Affected User Roles & Behaviors

Instructors

Instructors can create a Scheduler appointment group as a new tab in the Add Event window. However, instructors can only create appointment groups for courses that are displayed in the Calendar sidebar. Appropriate course calendar(s) should be selected in the sidebar before creating a calendar appointment group.

Once an appointment group is created, the appointment dates and times display directly in the instructor’s calendar. Time slots that have been claimed are shown as a solid color; unclaimed time slots are slightly faded. However, please note that if an appointment group is added to more than one course, appointment slots only display in the calendar for the first course shown in the appointment group.

Instructors can click each appointment to view individual signups, student comments, or remaining slots available. Instructors can also edit the number of users who can sign up for an individual appointment slot.

Within each date and time, instructors can also click the Group Details button to view the entire appointment group, which opens in a new window. In the Group Details page, instructors can view all details for the appointment group as per existing Scheduler functionality, add new appointment slots, and message students. Additionally, instructors can view the status of each appointment slot along with the name of each user in the reservation.

Students

Students can find appointments with the Find Appointments button in the Calendar sidebar and display an appointments window. Any available appointment group in any calendar will be displayed for the students to select. Previously students could only view appointment groups for courses being displayed in their Calendar sidebar.

Once a student selects a course from the appointment window, all available appointments display in the student’s calendar. Faded time slots indicate the time slot has been reserved.

The student can reserve any appointment slot by clicking a date and time.

Once a time slot has been reserved, the student can close the appointment group view by clicking the Close button in the sidebar. Only the reserved time slot will display in the student’s calendar.

If students want to change their time slots, they must click the Find Appointment button again and repeat the appointment process.

Feature Idea Contributions
Canvas features are always welcome to feedback. Product teams may make adjustments at any time via the Canvas Feature Idea process.
View existing Scheduler feature ideas
For new ideas, please tag the idea with scheduler

Developer Keys

Test Environment Access Option

This feature is used in conjunction with an existing feature option in Canvas. Please view the content below for additional details. For more information about feature options, please see the Canvas Release Notes FAQ.

Location to Enable Feature	Account Settings - Feature Options
Configuration Details	Developer Key Management and Scoping Feature Option
Affected Canvas Areas	Developer Keys
Affects User Interface	Yes
Affected User Roles	Admin

Summary

Developer Keys can be created to only be allowed in test environments.

Change Benefit

This change allows developer keys to be created without overriding production data. This functionality allows keys to be created in the production environment for environment refresh persistence, but only allow the key to function in the test environment.

Affected User Roles & Behaviors

Admins

As part of creating a new developer key or editing an existing key, the Key Settings page displays a checkbox option to enable the key for a test cluster. This checkbox represents enabling the key for the test environment associated with the account.

Developer Key Test Cluster Checkbox

Previously, developer keys for non-production environments had to be created in the test environment and replaced after each test environment refresh, or the key was created in the production environment meaning the key worked in both environments.

Feature Idea Contributions
Canvas features are always welcome to feedback. Product teams may make adjustments at any time via the Canvas Feature Idea process.
View existing developer keys/tokens feature ideas
For new ideas, please tag the idea with developer token

DocViewer

Stacking Replies

Location to Enable Feature	N/A
Configuration Details	N/A
Supported in Beta Environment	No
Affected Canvas Areas	DocViewer
Affects User Interface	Yes
Affected User Roles	Instructor, Student

Summary

Comment replies are stacked together and can be expanded to view the entire comment thread.

Change Benefit

This change helps manage multiple comments in a document.

Affected User Roles & Behaviors

Instructors, Students

When users view comments for a DocViewer-supported document, comments with replies are stacked together. The number of replies is indicated for the comment thread. Users can click the first comment to expand and view all additional comments.

DocViewer Stacking Comments

Feature Idea Contributions
Canvas features are always welcome to feedback. Product teams may make adjustments at any time via the Canvas Feature Idea process.
View existing DocViewer feature ideas
For new ideas, please tag the idea with docviewer

Gradebook

Export/Import CSV Custom Column Visibility

Location to Enable Feature	N/A
Configuration Details	N/A
Affected Canvas Areas	Gradebook
Related APIs	Custom Gradebook Columns API
Affects User Interface	No
Affected User Roles	Instructor

Summary

Gradebook Export/Import CSV files display custom columns created via the API.

Change Benefit

This change allows instructors to view all custom columns in the Gradebook as part of a Gradebook export or import CSV file.

Affected User Roles & Behaviors

Instructors

As part of exporting a Gradebook CSV file, instructors can view custom columns in the file. Custom columns can be created by an admin or an instructor via the API for the course. Custom columns are included at the end of the CSV file along with the final columns in the Gradebook. Custom columns can be created as editable or read only. Read-only column content cannot be changed.

If a custom column is editable, changes can be made in the CSV and uploaded to the Gradebook.

Feature Idea Contributions
Canvas features are always welcome to feedback. Product teams may make adjustments at any time via the Canvas Feature Idea process.
View existing Gradebook feature ideas
For new ideas, please tag the idea with gradebook

New Gradebook

CSV Export/Import Custom Column Visibility

This feature is used in conjunction with an existing feature option in Canvas. Please view the content below for additional details. For more information about feature options, please see the Canvas Release Notes FAQ.

Location to Enable Feature	N/A
Configuration Details	New Gradebook Feature Option
Affected Canvas Areas	New Gradebook
Related APIs	Custom Gradebook Columns API
Affects User Interface	No
Affected User Roles	Instructors

Summary

Gradebook Export/Import CSV files display custom columns created via the API.

Change Benefit

This change allows instructors to view all custom columns in the Gradebook as part of a Gradebook export or import CSV file.

Affected User Roles & Behaviors

Instructors

If a custom column is editable, changes can be made in the CSV and upl

Find more posts tagged with

Canvas LMS Release Notes

Comments

Jeff_F

Hello erinhallmark -- I am thinking something is amiss with a link in the above text:

---

Additional Details

For full details, questions, or comments about the Dashboard List View, please see the Canvas Release: Student Dashboard List View document.

---

The url in the hyperlink is: https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/ DOC-15109-canvas-release-non-scoring-rubrics

However the page content is about: Student Dashboard List View

cjr201

The roles affected parts of these release notes are great. This format is wonderful.

erinhmcmillan

Hi, Jeff,

The non-scoring rubrics document was copied to create this one, and sometimes the URL nomenclature in our platform doesn't always do what we want it to do. Smiley Sad I was able to manage the URL enough so that when you click the link and view the actual document, the URL won't have the additional reference in it.

Thanks!

Erin

dianepbh

"In addition to displaying automatically populated graded To Do items, the List view allows instructors to add non-graded items to the To Do list and students to add their own items to the To Do items."

Was excited at first to see that pages could have a due date. However, you can only just add a page to the TO DO items with a static date. That won't make sense if you use differentiated due dates for the rest of your course. We really really need pages to be added to the differentiated option.

For Students: Is the only way to add to to the TO DO list from the list view? This is a great idea but it would be more helpful to be able to add to the TO DO list regardless of the view. (we did the workaround by adding it to the calendar but this way is faster)

dianepbh

Browsers which support longdesc

Wondering about the longdesc option. Which browsers DO support it?

lchallen

Hi, I just logged into beta and this is the first time I have seen this notifications notification. Have I missed something also is there a way to disable this?

"Notifications. Tell us how and when you would like to be notified of events in Canvas."

cesbrandt

Original 2018-07-25 11:04 GMT-5

There appears to be an issues with the Student To Do List View where you have to scroll up when already at the top of the Dashboard before it will load the list. Somehow, I doubt very many students, or instructors, will have so many alerts that this would be possible.

Important Note: I had to scroll the mouse wheel to get it to "scroll" when already at the top. Click the mouse wheel to get the drag scroller, the Page Up button, Up Arrow button, and scrollbars would not trigger it.

I've tested in both Google Chrome 67 and Mozilla Firefox 61.

I sent it in via the Canvas Help menu (#03290450), but I wanted to share it with others. Here's a demo video of it happening in Chrome: Canvas_Dashboard_To_Do_List_Glitch

Update 2018-07-25 15:08 GMT-5

Instructure support responded to my ticket with the following:

I was able to replicate what you're seeing as well on my end. I'm not sure whether or not it is intended, as it does instruct you to scroll up to see the history, rather than the current items. I am escalating this case to see if this is intended or not.

I know it's unlikely that a student or instructor will not have anything current on the list, but it's weird functionality that a scroll up, past the top of the page, is needed to load the history. What if, like me before I cleared them, they have a bunch of alerts that push the list outside of view before the load can trigger? It seems like an odd way to load it. ^^'

jbuchner

Is the default column width going to be the wide width I've seen in demos? I'm glad that the column with adjustment can be made so that columns are smaller, but will they "autofit to content" they way they do now? Or when this feature is implemented, if I turn "New Gradebook" on, will I be spending an afternoon shrinking columns.

erinhmcmillan

Hi, Diane,

This is the first phase of this project; our product team knows that differentiated due dates are important and are considering them for a future release.

Thanks!

Erin

erinhmcmillan

Hi, Lawrence!

If it's your first time to the beta environment, you'll see this notification banner for the first time as well. New users to Canvas have this notification at the top of the window in the production environment (the beta environment is a copy of production) to help them get familiar with notifications right away. Once you click the button and visit the Notifications page it should go away.

Thanks,

Erin

erinhmcmillan

Hi, John,

Previously the New Gradebook columns could only be resized down to 140 pixels. The community let us know that they wanted to be able to size columns smaller than that again, so we have reverted the 140 pixel change and allowed columns to be minimized back to 10 pixels. However, the default width has not been affected, so if you don't resize your columns you'll always see the default size and you can choose to minimize or maximum the columns if desired. The columns don't autofit based on content.

Thanks,

Erin

erinhmcmillan

Hi, Christopher,

Thanks for noting this behavior, which is the result of your global announcements at the top of the page. I've let our team know and they're working on how to keep global announcements from interfering with the List View history. Watch for an update in a future release.

Thanks,

Erin

erinhmcmillan

Hi, Diane,

I confirmed with our accessibility program manager that although browsers do not support it, some screen readers do. This attribute was specifically requested to be added by our accessibility users group.

Thanks!

Erin

jsowalsk

Hi erinhallmark‌,

Great to talk with you at Instructurecon. In the preferences of the community, I created the stream for the release notes. I set it to a daily digest due to, to many emails with comments. How will I know if it is production or beta release notes being sent to me? Will it just be called Canvas Release Notes or Screencast?

Jessica

jsowalsk

Or just check the change notes?

InstContentTeam

Hi @jsowalsk

Since the format for Release Notes has been updated, there is now only one set of release notes published each release cycle (read: no more beta notes, no more production notes; just one big note). When you receive notification about updates to the Release Notes document from the Community, all notifications will relate to this one document. Any changes made to the release notes will live in the Release Notes Change Log, a link to which lives at the bottom of the Release Notes table of contents.

Hopefully that helps answer your question! Let us know if you're looking for more clarification or if there's anything else we can help with.

Thanks,

Allie

jsowalsk

Great, thank you so much -- this explains everything.

unknown

Hello Erin,

Are there any updates on the issue found above?

Kristin Lundstrum

There were about 15 Canvas Community members who participated in the Release Notes (2018-08-04) Collaborative Chat‌ on July 30th!

Here are the documents from the synchronous chat! 2018-07-30 Chat Archive and 2018-08-04 Release Notes Chat Collaborative Notes

erinhmcmillan

Hi, Fernando,

The team has created a ticket but it is not yet in progress. This change will be announced in a future release once it is completed.

Thanks,

Erin

BethanReid

Hi Erin,

Can you clarify whether you are changing the page so that the most recent appear at the top?

Kind Regards

Bethan

stelpstra

Nice work!

Regarding quizzes.next, if it is not in beta any more, why is the beta label not removed in the feature options? See:

course settings:

and;
account settings:

Cheers,

Jaap

erinhmcmillan

Hi, Bethan,

No functionality is changing with announcements; the problem is that when a page has lots of announcements, the List View doesn't scroll to the top of the page correctly. That's the behavior that is being addressed.

Thanks,

Erin

erinhmcmillan

Hi, Jaap,

The feature option labels are within Canvas itself and not the LTI tool, so another team needs to remove the beta label there. I am not sure when that label will be removed.

Thanks,

Erin

BethanReid

Thanks Erin,

In that case, I'd agree that current functionality is a bit weird, generally on social media, you'll find the most recent activity at the top, having to scroll down to view historical content. Can this be changed?

Thanks Bethan

venitk

I'm not seeing pages that I marked with to-do dates in my Calendar view. Will students see it in theirs? We were told we can use the calendar to move assignment dates around, but that feature is limited if we can't also move pages with to-do dates via the calendar.

erinhmcmillan

Hi, Bethan,

Since we aren't changing the functionality of the display, I'd recommend creating a feature idea in Canvas studio if you'd like to let our product managers know why the functionality should be adjusted.

Thanks!

Erin

erinhmcmillan

Hi, Katie,

Pages display in both your calendar and the student's calendar. You can also view to-do dates in the Pages index page when viewing all pages.

Thanks,

Erin

garrett_william

Hi, Erin!

Does this notification banner pop up for all new course enrollments? It would be great if it did. In our virtual program we emphasize these settings in our Getting Started Module. This banner will be a big help. Sorry if I missed it in the notes.

erinhmcmillan

Hi, everyone!

As always, if you've submitted a support cases for a behavior that has not yet been resolved, you'll be notified when our teams have an update.

Notes are now available for our next release: https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-15213-canvas-release-notes-2018-08-25

Thanks,

Erin

Child Item