[Import/Export] Undo Course Imports

[bmackenzie]

It seems that users should be able to undo or delete items they have imported into courses. On the Import Content page under the Current Jobs section, it would be very helpful to have an option to remove, delete, or undo each import individually. Currently if a mistake is made when importing to a course the only option seems to be to reset the entire course content. With users importing various resources from other courses and commons regularly, this solution would save a lot of time and heartache when such mistakes are made. To ask users to reset the entire course content, or to go through the entire course content and find every file, page, or assignment that may have been connected to that import and delete them individually seems like unfair punishment for an easily made mistake. It seems this would also possibly encourage more users to embrace the Canvas Community and use amazing resources like Commons, without fear of making such a mistake, or the time consuming steps of importing to a sandbox first then importing to the desired destination.

[maychu]

That totally just happened to me! My students complete reading quizzes, which I import from another collaborative course. I accidentally imported all the quizzes instead of just the upcoming ones and I lost all my grades and any changes I had made to the quizzes. Now it looks like I have to regrade some 200 reading assignments that I had already graded!
The import feature is really poorly designed and it is so easy to make a mistake. I had actually gotten as far as selecting specific course content, namely quizzes, but then the individual quizzes didn't show up and I accidentally imported all of them. This is a complete disaster. The only thing worse would be if I had accidentally imported the entire collaborative course and replaced the existing course content. 

[michelle_steven]

I commented and voted on this a couple of years ago when I was an instructional designer for Utah State. Now I work for Cidi Labs and just want to share that we have a solution for this! Our TidyUP tool will let you look for all those -1's that you get with multiple imports of the same content or sort by the last import date and delete them all out with the click of a button. I do really wish that Canvas had a solution but, in the meantime, if your institution has TidyUP, this is an easy way to clean them out.

[bmackenzie]

That sounds very interesting Michelle, thank you for your post. At first glance it appears that maybe that particular software is only available for Mac's. As you have it already, is there anyway you could post a short video showing exactly how it works within Canvas please? It sounds like it may be useful for deleting files but may not actually address the entire problem. In other words when importing a course/content there are obviously many changes that can happen other than those simply related to files. Am I correct in assuming that this tool simply allows to delete multiple files at once?

[michelle_steven]

You can use TidyUP with a Mac or PC. It's a course level LTI tool that integrates into Canvas. Once you have the tool and enable it in a course, it shows up in the left-hand column and you select it to run a scan. The tool was originally created at USU to clean out junk files for accessibility needs but we've added the ability to see all content in a course and where it's linked from or not linked from. You can also search for content. In the case of multiple imports, Canvas usually adds on a "-2" for the second import of already existing6 pages. TidyUP will let you look for all content within the course with a -2 and delete it or filter by "last updated" to find the content imported on a specific date and delete it. My Snagit is being temperamental right now but here are a few images that might help explain how it works.

How the view all Canvas content looks in TidyUP.

Using the search function to find the -2's.

Filtering by Last Updated/Import Date in TidyUP.

[bmackenzie]

Michelle, that post really helped me understand this solution/workaround better. Thank you so much, we are going to look into it!

[mpilati]

Here's a new one - there are times when you are importing something and you do not know how it is going to import. And then when it does not import correctly, you have to delete everything manually. I just had to do this with two complete OER texts that each consisted of 14 or more modules. As the content did not import in order (1 > appendix > 11, for example), I need to re-import it after it is fixed to ensure the integrity of the links. I am also set to do a training on using Commons today - and importing from Commons is often unpredictable. It would be great to be able to tell all of our faculty who have been tossed into Canvas with minimal instruction that there is a way to undo the sort of mistakes that we have all made.

[angela_montaldi]

Ughhh I just accidentally imported an emtire course to my course instead of just a page... now I have to delete my whole course and start over again?!

[CatherineK]

This would be extremely helpful. Our district has blueprint courses that are very large. Instead of just getting the part she needed, a teacher I work with imported the whole year long course into her course and had to spend an hour deleting it all back out. 

[kingsburybrunet]

I would appreciate having this feature available. It would also be useful (and maybe I need to find or start a separate thread for this?) to have a "Cancel content migration" option available so that if one realized a mistake while the content migration was still queued or running, the user could interrupt it and avert the mistake. I realize I'm talking about two separate things: A) a way to undo or reverse a completed content migration, and B) a way to cancel or interrupt a queued or in-process content migration.

[AnilG]

My friend accidentally imported an entire course, rather than specific course content. Then she couldn't find her original content and there was no way to 'undo' the course import. This would have been a GREAT feature.