[Inbox] Link Observers to Students for Messaging

[TampaNative]

When writing a message to a parent, Observer, it can be very difficult to know who their parent is exactly without having to first search through the People page. The People page does not allow us to Message Observers. It would be wonderful if when drafting messaging, and the Observers list was pulled down is said something such as

Tim Smith Observing Bobby Miller 

Observers do not always have the last names of our students and they sometimes are mixed families too. This would help tremendously so I know which Observer belongs to which Student. 

[KristinL]

Hi @TampaNative -

I'm sooo happy to see this Idea resurface! I think the first time I submitted this as a topic for conversation was in 2016? It's been a while! I think it's difficult to remember who is observing which student if last names don't match when you're working in the Inbox! 

In the meantime, my campus has adopted some custom CSS that's available because of a very kind Community member. Messaging Observers of Students in Canvas  has great solutions! I love having the custom script, and it's used frequently.

[mbgrayso]

I am currently teaching 6th and 7th grade math. 

When composing a message to a student, it would be SO BENEFICIAL to have a little checkbox to "cc the Observer" connected to that student. I have over 100 students, almost exclusively virtual, and can't always remember whether there is an observer and what the name is (sometimes, parents just register as an observer with a first name). 

[nshutters]

We gave the custom script linked above, but it was just too slow to be really effective. In one of the comments on that thread it mentions that it was slowed down to prevent hitting API limits. And I don't know if that was it, or that and a combination of being a fairly large district, but it would be faster to find the observer manually then it was waiting for the script to find them. So I, and many of our teachers, would really like to have a properly built and supported feature added to the inbox to include the observers of the selected students, or vice versa.

[ktupy]

It would be great if teachers could send a snapshot of their student's grades directly to the observer account associated with the observer.  Not a progress report, just a brief email with the current grade.  Even better would be the student's current grade and any missing assignments. 

[TriciaDejersey]

Please Canvas! If you could add this feature it would help parents feel more connected to their student's progress and able to support their student in a much quicker manner verses waiting for a teacher's progress report. This feature is what is missing from your platform. 

Thank you!

[Chris_Munzo]

@ktupy @TampaNative @TriciaDejersey I've read your comments and wanted to make you aware that as a Partner of Canvas, our "Grade Guardian" analytics can make it easier for you to identify and contact observers, and to send our version of a "daily report card" to a parent.  I've included two screen shots below to illustrate that.  You can find our Partner page here in the Community:

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Partner-Listings/Partner-Listing-AspirEDU-Inc/ta-p/428557

[mmaestu]

Currently, to message a student and their observer you would have to know the name of the observer. To do this, I have to have a print out of the people in my classes to find the observer(s) of a particular student.  This is really time consuming when you have over 100 students.

It would be really helpful to have the option to email the student and automatically send a copy of the message to the observing account, without having to enter the observers name. 

[anita_belew]

I would love to be able to use the send message feature in the grade book that would allow me to email both the student and their observer. 

It would also be awesome to have a way to message the observer with a list of the students they are observing (I have observers monitoring multiple students) who have not completed an assignment.

[audra_agnelly]

Canvas, you have greatly expanded your K12 user base in the past 2 years and K12 teachers need to be in regular communication with parents. We need functionality in the inbox that allows teachers to attach a child's parents to a message without having to go into our SIS to look up the parent's names. Our district has added code to our custom JS (shared by another user here in the community) to make this possible, but I dread the day a Canvas update causes that script to break. We need this to be part of the core functionality of Canvas especially in the K12 realm.