Canvas Deploy Notes (2026-02-25)

Canvas deploys contain code changes that are intended to fix bugs, improve performance, and prepare for new features. These deploys take place every two weeks and can be tested in the beta environment before the production deploy date indicated in the title of this document.

Unless otherwise stated, all features in this deploy are available in the Beta environment on 2026-02-12 and the Production environment on 2026-02-25.

Updated Features

SIS Imports API

Import SIS Data Endpoint [Added on 2026-02-26]

Affected User Roles: Admin

Feature Option Name to Enable	N/A
Enable Feature Option Location & Default Status	N/A
Subaccount Configuration	No
Account Setting to Enable	SIS Imports
Permissions	SIS Data - Import
Affects User Interface	No
Affected Areas	SIS Imports API

Summary

The Import SIS Data endpoint is updated to include a new pre_attachment option, allowing admins to upload SIS content directly to Instructure’s file store. This multi-step process mirrors existing content migration workflows and is designed to improve reliability when handling exceptionally large files.

Additionally, the Content-Type change is made in support of the pre_attachment option. The suggested values for ZIP and CSV data are application/zip or text/csv.

Change Benefit

This update increases platform stability and reduces timeout risks by providing a more robust method for high-volume data transfers. Enforcing Content-Type headers ensures better identification and management of integration traffic, aligning with broader API security and governance standards.

Other Updates

Course Settings

Cross-listing Updated to InstUI

Affected Users: Instructors

Affects User Interface	Yes
Affected Feature Areas	Course Settings

Summary

The Cross-list modal is updated to use React and InstUI. Functionality remains unchanged, but there are minor visual updates to improve consistency. These cosmetic changes, such as field styling or borders, do not affect how the modal works.

Change Benefit

This update gives the Cross-list form a cleaner, more consistent look.

Feature Workflow

The Cross-List Section modal displays minor visual updates.

Navigation

Improved Course Navigation Drag-and-Drop

Affected Users: Instructors

Affects User Interface	Yes
Affected Feature Areas	Course Settings

Summary

The course navigation page is updated to the latest coding patterns in React and TypeScript. Changes include:

Dragged items are highlighted with a blue fill and border instead of gray, consistent with keyboard-based reordering.
Items can be reordered using the keyboard: select an item, press Space to start moving it, use the Up/Down arrows to reposition, and press Space again to drop it or Esc to cancel.
While dragging with the keyboard, Tab and Shift+Tab do not change the selection. Only one item can be moved at a time, so this does not affect functionality.

Change Benefit

This update improves visual clarity and keyboard accessibility, making it easier and more predictable to reorder items and manage course navigation efficiently.

Feature Workflow

In the Course Navigation tab, dragged items are highlighted with a blue fill and border.

Change Log

Date

Description

2026-03-02

Updated

SIS Imports API- Import SIS Data Endpoint

Removed text- The previously documented requirement to set an appropriate Content-Type header when posting SIS content as the raw request body is now enforced. Sending ZIP or CSV data as the request body without identifying its type as via the Content-Type header will result in a 400 Bad request response.

2026-02-26

Added

SIS Imports API- Import SIS Data Endpoint- Admin

2026-02-18

Updated Navigation: Improved Course Navigation Drag-and-Drop Summary

While dragging with the keyboard, Tab and Shift+Tab do not change the selection. Only one item can be moved at a time, so this does not affect functionality.

Find more posts tagged with

Instructor

Canvas LMS Deploy Notes

Comments

InstContentTeam

Comments in this space are intended for collaboration between Community members. Instructure employees may review discussions and respond when possible, but responses are not guaranteed. Users are encouraged to work together by sharing use cases, best practices, questions, and clarifications.

Please keep replies threaded whenever possible to help keep conversations organized and easy to follow.

If you encounter a bug or need account-specific assistance, please contact Support, as issues reported here are not tracked or resolved.

KoenDekker

This sentence seems incomplete: "While dragging with the keyboard, Tab and Shift+Tab do". Do work?

Andy_Kalin

In playing with the functionality on beta, it seems like Tab and Shift+Tab don't do anything while dragging with the keyboard, unless I'm missing something. My limited guess is that it is meant to read "do not function" but perhaps @InstContentTeam can clarify.

AlyssaCollier

I'm also curious about the Tab and Shift+Tab sentence.

Additionally, is there a way to enable items using this keyboard navigation? In our testing, we were able to reorder items within the same list, but were not able to move items from disabled to enabled.

InstContentTeam

Update
Navigation: Improved Course Navigation Drag-and-Drop Summary

While dragging with the keyboard, Tab and Shift+Tab do not change the selection. Only one item can be moved at a time, so this does not affect functionality.

Heather Ahern

Thank you @KoenDekker , @Andy_Kalin and @AlyssaCollier!

The incomplete sentence has been fixed.

Andy_Kalin

Good question @AlyssaCollier. I just tested this on our beta instance, and in my experience the steps to enable an item are:
-tab until the item is selected
-tab once more to select the item's menu
-press enter to open the menu
-tab to select 'Enable' and then press enter.

Hopefully that makes sense and is helpful. I've included a few screenshots to help illustrate.

Depictions of the menus for enabling a course menu item using keyboard

AlyssaCollier

Thank you! I guess I was hoping to just keep pushing the up arrow to get it to the Enabled list, but I think this method makes sense.

TrinaAltman

Per the 2/21/26 Release Notes, Accessibility Checker is moving to this 2/25/26 deploy, but I don't see it listed here yet. Is Accessibility Checker still planned for 2/25?

Chris_Hofer

I could be wrong on this, but my $0.02 on this is that the Accessibility Checker will not be added to these Deploy Notes because technically, the Accessibility Checker is a new feature for Canvas. Per the very top of this document, "Canvas deploys contain code changes that are intended to fix bugs, improve performance, and prepare for new features." You can read more about the differences between Deploy Notes and Release Notes by visiting this link: https://community.instructure.com/en/kb/articles/664263-release-notes-faq

Unless something else comes up, I would expect that it will still be released on February 25th. I'm sure that Instructure will update the Release Notes should they need to push back that date even more.

I hope this helps in some way.

jsowalsk

@Chris_Hofer I hope they put it in the release notes so we know the feature option information and information about what to expect since it was delayed.

Heather Ahern

Hi @TrinaAltman @Chris_Hofer is correct. Since this is a new feature, it will not be added to the deploy notes and it is not part of the deploy code that is pushed out. To answer your question, yes the feature is currently still confirmed to be released on 2/25.

JordanGarciaNAU

Have you all received any input on the Save button in the Settings→ Navigation page? So many of our faculty members add something to their enabled tools list, and then forget to click save as its sitting at the bottom of the page.

Andy_Kalin

@JordanGarciaNAU Our LMS team briefly talked about this very issue last week, and these excellent suggestions were offered: it would be great to have the "Save" button at the top of that screen/page, too; or it could have it be that the dragging and dropping action saves the change, like it does on the modules page.

kjackson26

Is this for administrators or faculty? And if both or the latter, what do you mean by "account" - classes? or Instructors?
Thanks

Andy_Kalin

(I think your reply might have become de-threaded from your original question.) Hopefully @Chris can verify, but I think the feature option can be enabled or disabled at the account/admin level. If it's disabled at that level, then instructors would not see the option in the course menu or in course settings > navigation. If it is enabled at the account level, then instructors can see it in the course menu and in course settings > navigation, where they can leave it or hide it from students. Hopefully I understood your question correctly, and I hope this info is helpful! 🙂

InstContentTeam

Updated
Added

SIS Imports API- Import SIS Data Endpoint- Admin

JamesSekcienski

Why is this just now being added? This update is a breaking change that did not provide any advance notice to admins to ensure necessary updates were made before the new enforcement was made.

In addition, will documentation be provided for the endpoint to use for a file upload to use for an SIS Import? The File Uploads documentation provides a few examples, but not for SIS Import.

DanJagger

Fully agree… the inconsistency between the Navigation page and the Modules page leads to issues…both save or both auto-save and I think the issue goes away.

From a support and user perspective, consistency across the platform can't be valued enough.

Jeremy Stanley

While implementing the pre_attachment flow (to allow institutions to upload larger SIS batches without being subject to Canvas's 1-minute request timeout), we encountered an old hack from 2011 designed to paper over raw posts to the endpoint lacking a Content-Type. This hack hindered the new feature, and since it was not necessary to call the API as documented, we didn't consider its removal to be a breaking change.

Further, in testing the feature originally, we found that raw CSV posts still didn't require a Content-Type (only ZIP did), but unfortunately a CDN update rolled out at the same time changed this, expanding the impact of the change beyond what we expected. As a result, we have rolled back the change and at present are not enforcing the Content-Type header.

We found a way to support the new pre_attachment feature regardless, although only with a JSON request body, not with HTML form encoding. We will update the documentation to make it clearer how to use this feature, but the gist of it is, instead of supplying attachment, supply a pre_attachment object including the items described in the File upload documentation (name, size, and content_type; the folder options are not relevant). Then the response will include a pre_attachment object that includes a URL to upload the file to. Once the file is successfully uploaded, the SIS import will start.

JamesSekcienski

@Jeremy Stanley Thank you for the explanation and for rolling back the enforcement change. Will a new date be scheduled for enforcement?

Also, will the Release Notes be updated to remove that the Content-Type header is now enforced since that part of the change was rolled back?

InstContentTeam

Update

SIS Imports API- Import SIS Data Endpoint

-Removed text- The previously documented requirement to set an appropriate Content-Type header when posting SIS content as the raw request body is now enforced. Sending ZIP or CSV data as the request body without identifying its type as via the Content-Type header will result in a 400 Bad request response.

NickKays

We really need to be made aware of these kinds of breaking changes BEFORE the change gets pushed out to Production. This caused a major outage of integration feeds at our institution, and if it was included in release notes we could have checked and fixed the issue and not impacted our users.

While I appreciate that content type's weren't specifically mentioned in the API doco, making any significant changes to API end points, particularly SIS Imports, can cause big disruptions to customers who hit these end points as part of critical integrations. To reduce customers being affected by changes to API end points, please consider including all changes in release notes, even if you don't think it impacts customers, so that customers can check themselves and prevent major outages like this occurring again.

NickKays

It would be good to ensure any customers with open tickets related to this change are made aware that the content header enforcement has now been rolled back for this end point.

DilonWalters48416444

Thanks for the feedback

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