[Notifications] Default notification settings profiles by user role

[seth]

As an account or subaccount admin, I want to set default notification settings for my users by role. Like role-based permissions, these notification settings could be locked or unlocked; that is, I could choose to allow users in a given role to change a default notification setting or not.

transferred from the old Community

Originally posted by: Kurt Beer
Special thanks for contributions by: Pamela Wik-Grimm, Simon B. Walker, Tricia Jackson

[mlattke]

Yes!  This would be great to ensure students are getting certain notifications that are required!!!

[SethBattis]

Amen.

For perspective, the biggest (and really only) complaint about Canvas during our initial roll-out a couple years ago was how "chatty" the notifications were by default. In response, I shared with folks that they had some agency in this situation (had they just clicked through the new user notification settings banner? probably) and pointed them back to notification settings. Where people just turned everything off. Which worked great. For them. In the short term. But as more and more information flows through our Canvas instance, these same folks are now grumbling about being "out of the loop".

Le sigh.

It would be great to stave off this situation by allowing administrators to set default notification settings for all users at a level appropriate to the institution, and making these settings role-based would be fantastic. (Right now, I'm gearing up to do a massive reset of notification settings via the API over the summer, but it would be keen to have some level of configuration actually built into the system.)

[vkg]

From my perspective this could be even simpler. Rather than default notifications by role, we'd go for default notification settings across the institution for all users.

[scottdennis]

Panda-Cat: A mythical creature that we dreamed up to catch your attention, make you laugh, and encourage you to keep reading the explanation of our archive process for Feature Ideas

Archive: An archived Feature Idea is not dead forever, but it has been taken out of stage progression.  When Community members submit feature ideas they are reviewed by the Community Team and then put to a vote by the community at large.  If the idea does not receive 100 votes within 3 months it will be archived.  Ideas that reach the 100 vote threshold within the first three months remain open for voting. Find more information about this process at How does the voting process work for feature ideas?

Can archived ideas still become a feature?  Yes.  Some feature ideas that do not receive 100 votes are resubmitted by Community members and find more supporters as people's needs change, rising more quickly to the top.  Oftentimes archived feature ideas are evaluated in groups when we are preparing to refactor a particular tool or feature of Canvas and may still influence product direction.

[canvas_admin]

I agree with the above comments and am sad to see this one get archived.   We want our students to be in Canvas and Canvas is a primary way to communicate important course and institutional information to students in a timely manner.  Of course, if the student has his or her notification turned off (or set to weekly), then he or she is going to miss important information and have to be told in another manner which creates more work for either the instructor, TA, or our Canvas admin (ME!).   

I understand the freedom to let them choose and the onus is on the student to make sure he or she sets up the notifications in order to stay on top of things. However, it would be nice if we could set and lock default notification settings in a similar way that we can set and lock permissions for various account and course level roles.

[scottdennis]

Hey Mark,

I feel your pain, for sure.  In my previous life I dealt with some of  the same challenges that  @SethBattis  outlined above.  I am wondering how the "massive reset of notification settings via the API" went this past summer.  I'm not saying it should replace additional functionality via the interface but I'm also wondering how efficient it could be to just periodically reset notifications for certain groups or classes of user?

[DrNufer]

Our institution's thought is that all course announcements should be regulated by administration.  There is no reason in our minds why a student should be able to unsubscribe to course announcements.  Many of our faculty consider announcements the ideal way to communicate course overviews and disseminate important information.

[SethBattis]

I chickened out. I couldn't get enough administrative support lined up to counter the anticipated backlash.

[dwillmore]

We really need this feature.

[dwillmore]

Is there a way to reopen an idea for a vote?   Admin specific requests tend to get short sheeted.