View In-Document Comments in Student App

[tlofinch]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

We are a 1:1 iPad school so typically our students exclusively use the Canvas app to access Canvas. Our students are not able to view the in-document comments that teachers make on their assignments in the iPad app.  Students can see highlighting, pen draws, and strikethrough marks.  They cannot see any typed text comments or typed comments associated with other markings.  Students can see an icon that the teacher made a typed comment (point marker or text bubble), but cannot actually view the comment.  Since Canvas does not support mobile browsers, this should be something that can be done in the app.  I believe this functionality has changed with the switch to DocViewer.

Comments from Instructure

Per comments in this thread, this behavior has been resolved as part of https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-13178-canvas-by-instructure-release-notes-ios-318 

[peytoncraighill]

If students tap the point annotation, they should see a "Note..." button appear which allows them to see the comments. It's designed this way to optimize viewing documents and annotations on a phone, but we could come up with a better way to display on larger screens. Let me know if this isn't working or if I'm misunderstanding.

[molse]

This is essential. I am at a 1:1 iPad school and struggle to send feedback to my students because they can't view it within the app. Please fix/add this!

[tlofinch]

Thank you Peyton!  This fact should really be included in the Canvas Guides.  I couldn't find anything there to help me with this problem, which is why I asked the question Issues with teacher's comment annotations on iPad.  Is there a reason that comments other than point annotations don't work like this?  For instance, in the picture I posted above, "Centralized" has a highlight comment attached to it but you cannot view it like the point annotation.  There should be a note in the Teacher Guides letting teachers know that these comments are not visible when viewed on mobile devices.

I really appreciate the clarification and I do understand your point about needing to optimize view on a phone.  

[peytoncraighill]

This is definitely a bug. Students are supposed to be able to see annotation comments regardless of annotation type. It appears that annotation comments in the student app are only working for point annotations right now, but that's not on purpose. We're looking into it -- I should be able to give an update within 2-3 days.

[Renee_Carney]

Thank you,  @peytoncraighill 

Would you like  @tlofinch ‌ to submit a support case for you, or would you like to track it here?

[peytoncraighill]

Support created a ticket for us last Friday, we triaged it this morning, I'll give updates here.

[Renee_Carney]

[peytoncraighill]

We've got a patch for this that's going through QA now. We'll bundle it up with a few other bug fixes for the student app and push out an update within a few days.

[shane_ohara]

Is there an update to this patch? We have had a bunch of reports for this matter and I am not seeing that the issue is fixed yet.

[peytoncraighill]

Well that took longer than expected! We've got a load of bug fixes going out for review with Apple today, including this one. It's in TestFlight already getting reviewed for TestFlight, which you'll be able to play with if you've registered for beta access. If you haven't done that, here's the signup sheet:

Canvas Student Beta Signup