Dear All,
I also had this question but it is now been answered. Anyway...
As @kblack mentioned in his 8 Aug 2017 post, there is a request for Scheduler to permit recurring events:
"See, for example, this Feature Idea, which is currently on the Product Radar: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/1224-scheduler-recurring-events."
Today is 8 Jan 2023, five and a half years (5.5 yrs) after kblack's post, for which the request presumably occurred prior to kblack's post.
This is just another example of Canvas's suspect business practice of selling an incomplete beta version product to their paying customers, while marketing it in a way that makes purchasers think that Canvas is the solution to everything. Once sold, what the buyer gets is a half-baked product, where many of the desirable and necessary tasks and activities are simply not implemented, or are only partially implemented but only in ways that are brain-damaged enough such that the "feature" is somewhere between half and entirely useless. Canvas can, of course, get away with this because the Canvas users—faculty and students who are forced to use and are continually annoyed with Canvas—are not the same group of people who decide what LMS the University will use and who writes the checks.
For example, the very first thing I tried to do when I learned about this Scheduler "feature" and before I learned that it was only partially implemented was to create an appointment group for my office hours, which reoccur on a regular basis. Vainly, I searched for a way to specify recurring dates only to be disappointed, but not surprised. It is ridiculous and demeaning to Canvas users that in the last 5.5 years, Canvas has not yet implemented recurring dates in an appointment group. This is such an ENTIRELY OBVIOUS FEATURE that only a complete dummard would think in the first place to implement a calendar scheduler application that does not permit the specification of recurring dates. Sadly, just like one of Canvas's other half-baked "features", the Inbox that I hate so much, I will not be using the Calendar app to schedule office hour appointments.
Canvas, you had better wake up! According to [1], the market for LMS's is expected to grow in 2023 to $22.4 billion, and although you are tied with Blackboard for market share (30.7% each), technology history has repeatedly shown that a newcomer who drastically disrupts the market with new and innovative products can easily earn rapid market share and disrupt even large companies which have been market leaders for decades (think Microsoft and IBM). Heck, a free LMS named Moodle has almost as much market share as Canvas and Blackboard (25.27%) , both of which are considerably more expensive.
My institution used Blackboard prior to switching to Canvas so I have experience using both LMS's and I can tell The Reader that Blackboard is a superior product. When using Blackboard, I cannot remember a time when I could not figure out how to do something because it was so well implemented. When I first saw Canvas, I thought to myself that this appears to be a very dumbed-down version of BB designed for teachers with none to minimal computer skills. Now, after having been forced to use Canvas for the last four years, I can assure The Reader that Canvas is a very dumbed-down version of BB designed for teachers with none to minimal computer skills. In the LMS market long run, I am placing my bets on Blackboard first, Moodle second, and any new really innovative open-source and free LMS similar to Moodle third. The question is not when that new market leader will come along, it is simply who it will be.
1. https://research.com/education/lms-statistics. Published 2022-12-20. Last Accessed: 2023-01-08.
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