[Announcements] Publish and Unpublish Announcements

[dhulsey]

I love that Canvas can bring over announcements when I copy content from another Canvas course. This keeps me from copying and pasting announcements I make every semester.  To further develop this feature, it would be nice if Announcements were unpublished on import, meaning the instructor can see them but the students can't. With a "publish button on every announcement, instructors could release announcements quickly when they are needed without the tedious setting of a date and time on each announcement.

This feature would also bring announcements in line with other tools in Canvas that use publish and unpublish functionality and would help instructors who might unintentionally be releasing announcements to students from a past semester.

[jmccarth]

I copy my whole course from one semester to the next.  The announcements get copied also. I have announcements that I want to post at various times throughout the semester.  I don't want them to show all at once.  I don't want to go through each one and set a delay posting date.  I want to be able to hide them all at once and then show the ones I want when I want throughout the course.

Please put a show/hide toggle for each announcement.

[cwakefield]

yes please.  Make this a thing!

[cwakefield]

Please create the option to publish/unpublish announcements. Or, something similar so that announcements can be hidden, but not deleted, and then updated and posted later

Thank you!

[twassmer]

Where can I vote for this feature. Is that option also gone?

[akhuebel]

I really dislike the announcement feature that posts the announcements when you hit save.  I wish Announcements were like all the other Canvas features and could be saved but unpublished without using the delay date feature.  I get caught by this every 6 months or so, including today and now I'm wasting time saying "don't worry about that announcement; I inadvertently posted it by saving."

I also agree that control over announcements when copying/importing is very important.

[Stef_retired]

@akhuebel  What you've described has been requested at  Add Save & Publish button to Annoucements if you'd like to add comments and a rating to that conversation.

[mark_kerfoot]

Can Canvas please merge this "open for conversation" with

Add Save & Publish button to Annoucements

they are the same ask.

[Stef_retired]

@mark_kerfoot  Thanks for mentioning this. We're tracking these ideas separately, as we see them as distinct from one another. The one to which you've linked in effect is requesting the ability to save an announcement draft; this one requests the ability to unpublish after an announcement has been published. 

They'll still be evaluated together as we work on the Discussions and Announcements Enhancements project.

[mark_kerfoot]

Okay, thanks for letting me know.

Another feature I'd find useful if publish/unpublish becomes available is the ability to update the author and "creation" date on announcements. Currently, when import I announcements from a previous semester, it indicates an unknown author "U" and retains the original publisher date. If I release the announcement like this, it doesn't reflect that I am the author and it gets buried deep in the announcements because of the old creation date. The only option currently is to delay the release of all announcements (to a date beyond the current semester), then copy and paste the announcement into a "new announcement" when I am ready to use it during the current semester. It takes a long time to do this at the beginning of each semester for all of my announcements. Thanks for looking into this!

[Stef_retired]

Although not exactly identical to what you've just described, @mark_kerfoot , an active conversation associated with that request is   Allow discussion owner to be changed, (discussions and announcements share the same design platform).