Why change Guides links now?!?

[awarmar]

We have just realized tons of the links to Canvas Guides we have saved/used on pages are broken. This is causing us significant work at a time when we don't have the time.... It's also not consistent as to which have changed. We can't find anything in the Community on when this will be completed or why it's happening. 

We need to know when this process will be done so we can update all of our links...sigh...Or better yet, don't changes these URLS (at least not now!). 

[Stef_retired · Accepted solution]

 @awarmar , we experienced some issues yesterday with one of the providers we use to stage our documentation behind the scenes, and while we believe we have largely resolved them, we are collecting links at https://community.canvaslms.com/thread/47706-unauthorized-error-message-for-canvas-guides —so if you run into specific lessons that are returning error messages, please add them to that discussion so we can keep everything consolidated.

Thanks.

[awarmar]

Thank you so much for this reply!! So, you are saying that the "old" links should be working still? So, should we not work on changing our "old links?" Will both links work in the future or is one or or the other what we need to use? 

[Stef_retired]

 @awarmar , yes, all of the existing links should still be working, but our team collectively and manually wrote nearly 800 redirects yesterday to resolve this issue that was unexpectedly bestowed upon us yesterday by the tool provider—so we might have missed a few. If you run across one that does not, please add it to the collection in the other discussion.

[awarmar]

Okay, great! We do still have a lot broken, but we are glad to know that we don't need to change our links.  Some of them we have already updated to the "new" links so we don't have the broken anymore. The "new" links with the names of the guides in them are also stable links, ya? 

We wish we had known this happened (like an outage alert) but we are very appreciative of your quick replies as we do know that you are all equally extra busy and stressed right now. 

[Stef_retired]

 @awarmar , we posted this announcement to the Guides space yesterday:

There are a few guides for Instructors that will return an "unauthorized" error when you try to open them.  If you reach that page you can locate the same guide at http://guides.instructure.com/. We're working on correcting the error and hope to have the complete Instructor Guide set restored ASAP.

Followers of that space would have received the announcement notification in their Canvas Community inboxes and in the form of an email if they have that external notification enabled.

[awarmar]

Got ya--guides aren't something I would have thought I needed to follow, but I guess that was an oversight. I'll add it to the list of pages I follow.... 

[tlc_OU]

I echo what Amanda has said. I just recently made a comment on one of the articles regarding the changing of links. If there isn't a notification system in place that allows us to know when and which links are updated, it puts more strain on our support staff, as we are then tasked to stay continuously diligent for any changes to your support documentation (or we wait until someone tells us that a link is broken, which isn't ideal). 

[kblack]

Hi tcox - If I'm understanding your comment correctly, you actually can be notified when there are changes made in the guides by clicking the Actions button in the upper-right corner of the table of contents landing page, such as what I have below:

I knew something was wrong yesterday when my Inbox was absolutely flooded by hundreds of notifications about changes in the online documentation!  So you can be notified....but be careful with what you want!   Fortunately, in my many years of following the online guides in just this manner, this was the (incredibly) wild exception.

[tlc_OU]

Ken,

Thank you for the suggestion! I think I'll err on the side of caution and set the notifications up )

[kblack]

Now why didn't I think of that beforehand?!?  Thanks for the suggestion, Tomika!

[awarmar]

Something like an alert/Canvas notification that the guides were broken would still have been nice--and simple (I think ) to have done.