[Canvas Mobile - Student] Mobile push notifications should not be influenced by the "Users can edit their communication channels" setting
| Idea is currently in development |
At our institution we have the "Users can edit their communication channels" setting (added Nov 30, 2022) unchecked/disabled because we do not want users adding alternative email addresses to their communication channels. We want all email notifications to go to their university-provided email address. However, any users who have installed the mobile app after the setting was disabled are unable to initialize or configure push notifications. Canvas Support has indicated this is the intended behavior, though I am personally skeptical. This appears to be a bug considering there is a separate setting, "Enable push notifications to mobile devices" which we have enabled/checked. Despite that setting being enabled, so long as "Users can edit their communication channels" is unchecked, new users of the mobile app are unable to receive push notifications. Support has suggested we might re-enable this setting and instead use custom CSS to hide the buttons which allow a user to add alternative email addresses, but this seems like a hacky way to get to a solution which should be achievable through the settings currently available if they behaved as expected.
Push notifications should not be considered a "communication channel" in the same way that an email address or phone number might be. Considering the enablement of push notifications is governed by a separate setting, it is unintuitive to have it so that users cannot receive push notifications to their mobile devices just because they are prevented from adding email addresses and phone numbers to their profile.
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