[People] Allow +People After Course Ends

[jfountain]

Our instructors and TAs need the ability to add people (non-students) to past courses, such as new faculty, so they can review prior course content.

Once a course has ended (by term or by date), people can only be added to those courses through SIS files.  The +People button is grayed out for everybody, including the LMS administrator.

This puts undue burden on the LMS admin to run the files instead of allowing the instructor or TA to add people themselves to their own courses.

Please enable the +People button for past courses so course editors can add non-students to prior courses.

Confirmation from support:  "Unfortunately once a course has ended it is not possible to add anyone even if you give them access to the course after it has ended. The best thing to do if you want to add someone to a course after it has ended is to open it back up again, add the user, and then close the course."

[LMacaulay]

Agreed!  When a new/different faculty member is assigned to teach a course, we often give them access to the previous iteration of the course. It is so time consuming to do what the Canvas Support response suggests. At the very least, users with sub-account or full admin rights should be able to add teachers to a course after the end date.

[Andrew42]

Similarly to @LMacaulay , when new or returning teaching staff begin, I'm often asked to enrol these staff in current and previously offered iterations of subjects.
When doing this via the user interface would be faster than preparing a csv, this means opening each subject in its own tab and enrolling them in each page. Enrolling them in the subjects for the current year is fast this way, but for previous offerings of the subjects I have to
- change the term or the end date assigned to the course
- save the change
- complete the enrolment
- reset the end date or term and
- save again.
This is not an efficient process, and I wonder why restricting enrolments after the end date has passed is a requirement in the first place.

[jfountain]

Problem statement:

Every time a teacher needs to be added to a past course, they have to contact me as admin and then I need to run it through an SIS file. The +People button is grayed out for course editors and even for me as admin after the course's term end date. I have tried allowing Teacher/TA/Designer a later term end date but that does not activate the +People button.

Proposed solution:

If term end dates have been hardcoded for Teacher/TA/Designer to end later than for students, and/or dates for those roles are set to "whenever," allow those roles to add people to the courses through the GUI using the +People button.

User role(s):

admin,instructor,ta,designer