[ARCHIVED] Announcements in Inactive and Unpublished Courses

[arovner]

Hi All,

Need your expertise to answer these questions - If faculty create Announcements before they publish their Canvas course - will the Announcements be automatically sent when the course is published or not?  (I'm thinking not but can't find the specific answer.)

Also we have a  Canvas course that we put all students in each term and then change the Course dates to the current quarter to "activate" it for that quarter's students.  If I wrote an Announcement before we updated the course dates, will all students be emailed the Announcement at that time or just be able to see it when they logged into Canvas?

Thanks Village!

Amy

[amanda_taintor]

Hi Amy, 

I am fairly certain the published announcement will be shot out as soon as the course is published. I am having a memory of this exact issue occurring to a few of my instructors last semester and causing a bit of an issue. However I am open to being wrong as well

[arovner]

Thank you!  We'll see because our Admin just made it live. EEK!

Amy

[lindalee · Accepted solution]

Hi  @arovner ‌,

Unfortunately, announcements posted in unpublished or inactive courses do NOT generate notifications when the course is published or activated. The announcements will be there and be visible to students, but they do NOT get a notification about them.

The best approach is to delay posting the announcement until after the course is active or published (https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-10422-415250735 )

Sorry.

-Linda

[arovner]

Thanks  @lindalee ‌!!  It's always the little details that can be hard to find answers for.

best,

Amy

[lorrmay36]

However, this works:

https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-13115 

Now when my students log into Canvas they will see the announcements I made for them when the course was unpublished. 

[natalie_norton1]

We were trying to work out the same thing the other day, and also what happens if you make an announcement in a course which is published, but which the student has not accepted the invitation for. The conclusion we came to with support was that they would not get an announcement notification but would get an inbox message notification. This was useful for staff who needed to get a message to students before the start of term (and had students who were enrolled but haven't accepted the invite yet!)