Canvas Inbox (Conversations) Error for just me or everyone?

Multiple instructors are receiving error messages when creating Inbox messages. Is this just my instance or is it widespread? As the field admin for my instance, I submitted a help request to Canvas Support, who said that engineering is working on it, but I have not been given an ETA yet. Is there any public status link for this issue?

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Accepted answers

AngelaBBurgess

I also reported the problem and received the following message: "My name is Jeremy and I am with the Advanced Support Team. I understand you are seeing an error message when sending inbox messages. I was able to find an open engineering ticket for this behavior. I have attached the case to our open engineering ticket so you will be notified with updates as they are available."

I have let my teachers know and encouraged them to tell their students.

Chérie, if you check your Sent messages, you may see that your message actually did send (perhaps multiple times). Otherwise, I would suggest reaching out to Canvas Support (if you have that access through the Help button) or your university's Canvas Admin (who can contact Canvas Support).

All comments

Chris

Hi @smathews,

I'm not seeing any errors around this with my institution's Canvas instance. I was able to create and send an inbox message successfully. If this is a very localized issue, my guess is that it won't appear on the status page just based on my prior experience with incidents like that.

-Chris

AngelaBBurgess

We aren't receiving error messages. However, when trying to send, the message pops back up again, so the teacher (or student) clicks "Send" again, rinse + repeat - sometimes the sender repeats the cycle 4 or 5 times, not realizing that the message is sending each time. I am just about to enter a ticket for my district as well.

Minta_UCSC

While I was able to send a message using the Inbox/Messages without issue, we've heard that it is glitching for for multiple teachers and students. Specifically, the issues they report include: After drafting a message and hitting send, the inbox seems to freeze and not send the message, sometimes giving an error that the message wasn't sent, other times not, leading to multiple attempts at sending. Later it seems the messages were sent and the multiple attempts at sending lead to users receiving multiple copies of the message. As there was a Canvas access error issue reported on the Canvas Status page yesterday, we've asked users to clear cache and make sure they are using an updated version of Chrome in the hopes that resolves the issue.

dbrace

Hi @smathews

I have not experienced any problems with the Canvas Inbox, nothing has been reported to me, and I see nothing in our Canvas Support Admin Console.

You and I (you are at RACC and I am at LCCC) are in the same AWS region (us-east-1) but using different Canvas clusters (I am cluster99 and you are cluster43).

I wonder if the problem is at all related to which Canvas cluster we are using.

-Doug

MAJ18

I just received a similar report (copied below) from a faculty member.

"Recently I have been getting error messages when trying to send email to my NUR 743 students via Canvas. The message does not show up as being sent and does not "disappear". Any thoughts?"

NeeleyD

I am getting an error at both colleges where I teach. If I am composing a message using Inbox and it takes me more than a minute, then when I click to send, I get an error. This has been happening for a couple of weeks. I end up copying the message, hitting cancel, refreshing the screen, and then pasting the message quickly and hitting send. Then it works. It's almost as if it times out while I am composing a message. Sadly, it doesn't happen every time so it's hard to figure out what is going on and why it's happening.

dbrace

Has anyone reported to this to Canvas Support? What have they said or are they continuing to look into it? Has anyone with the appropriate authority at their institution contact their Canvas CSM?

-Doug

lenz

Does anyone have any idea WHY I can't send any messages TO MY STUDENTS through CANVAS (yesterday and today) AT THE BEGINNING OF FINALS WEEK?????

This is beyond frustrating!!! Is even CANVAS even working on this??? ARE THERE ANY UPDATES???

I have things I NEED TO SEND related to their FINAL EXAMS. Yes, I know I can go through OUTLOOK (not helpful!), but I don't know how many of them will look there since I NEVER communicate with them that way. Plus, I have access to their assigned university email only, which they rarely if ever use. Perfect!!!

Thank you CANVAS for again being a giant time suck at absolutely the worst possible time. I'd LOVE to know who sold this crap to our university (AND who bought it).

Chérie L-H

AngelaBBurgess

I have let my teachers know and encouraged them to tell their students.

dbrace

Hello Everyone!

I understand the frustration that you are experiencing, especially because of the time of the semester in higher education and because not everyone is experiencing the problem.

There are two recommendations/work arounds:

consider using a Canvas announcement in the course instead of the Canvas Inbox
1. you might even find that announcements are better to use than the Inbox because you have full access to the Rich Content Editor and you can copy the announcement to another course (meaning that you do not need to type it again or copy and paste)
2. you might want to consider showing recent announcements on the "Home" area of your course (regardless of what it is set to) so that the announcements are easier to see
3. if you have previously hidden the "Announcements" area, make sure to set it as visible
4. if you do create an announcement make sure to delete the announcement if/when you copy your shell or use the "Select specific content" option while copying/importing and select everything except any announcements that are not needed again
5. for the faculty at my institution, I typically recommend course announcements over Canvas Inbox messages
use your institution's email system

I know that these are different communication methods than what you might have done the rest of the semester but they are the best options to use under the circumstances.

-Doug

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