API Analytics - Student Submissions - Undocumented value "Status = Floating"

[glparker]

Good Morning

Using the Analytics API
https://canvas.instructure.com/doc/api/analytics.html#method.analytics_api.course_assignments
Specifically this endpoint "Get user-in-a-course-level assignment data"
GET /api/v1/courses/:course_id/analytics/users/:student_id/assignments

Returns the payload as expected but also included a value called "status" that includes values like Missing, Late, On_Time and Floating.    
Most of these values make sense given the context, but I don't know what to make of the Floating status.    It makes up more than half of the data returned for my few test courses.     

Does anyone know what Floating means?     Does anyone know where to see docs that explain what all the values returned for status in this context mean?

Here's an example

 {
        "assignment_id": 15364669,
        "title": "Networking Essentials",
        "unlock_at": null,
        "points_possible": 1.0,
        "non_digital_submission": false,
        "multiple_due_dates": false,
        "due_at": null,
        "status": "floating",
        "muted": false,
        "max_score": 1.0,
        "min_score": 1.0,
        "first_quartile": 1.0,
        "median": 1.0,
        "third_quartile": 1.0,
        "module_ids": [
            4772468,
            4772470
        ],
        "excused": false,
        "submission": {
            "posted_at": null,
            "score": null,
            "submitted_at": null
        }
    },

Thanks <Glen

[chriscas]

Hi @glparker,

While I can't find documentation on this either, I have a suspicion about what "floating" means.  Do all of the "floating" status results have no submission, as shown in your example?  If so, I think what that means is that the student has started a submission (typing in the box, attached a file, etc), but not actually hit the submit button yet.  Thus their work could be considered "floating" out there in the system.  I could be way off base with this, and I fully agree this should be documented by Instructure, but I hope my suspicion might help you figure this out.

-Chris

[DecoyLex · Accepted solution]

I took a look at the source code for this particular API. Apparently, Instructure themselves aren't exactly sure what this value means: "We *think* floating means 'future', or 'not submitted yet' -- Venk". Here's the commit where these comments were added: https://github.com/instructure/analytics/commit/033a70eb859f4d0b1a1b1720bb603420be7f6046. The commit that added the floating submission type unfortunately predates the open-sourcing of the Canvas analytics package, so there isn't really a way to figure out the context surrounding when it was introduced.

Looking at where Canvas determines the submitted status, I think the above assumption is correct, with the addition that unsubmitted assignments that have no due date will also show up as floating. Based on the way that code is written, floating seems to also be the catch-all for when no other status can be determined.

[glparker]

That's hilarious, and just so on point for development in general.    The "not yet submitted w/ no due date" jives with what I've seen in my data so far, but it's good to  know it's more of a catch-all/default state going forward.