Does Canvas search and displaying results based on 'hidden' or non-visible user information?

[StefanNorinder]

Hello forum members,

I'm currently delving into a peculiar problem in Canvas where it seems that one user's data has been overwritten by another's. This may be related to our integration setup, so I might not be able to blame Canvas just yet.

A curious aspect of this issue emerged while using the 'People' search function in the Admin tab. Searching for the term 'tintin' brought up expected results, including users with 'tintin' in their names or emails. However, I also found a user who doesn't have the term 'tintin' visible anywhere on their profile. Both this person and a person with Tintin in the bio are connected to the incident of data overwriting.

This situation raises a question: Is Canvas capable of searching through and displaying results based on 'hidden' or non-visible user information? I would greatly appreciate any insights or experiences you might have regarding similar occurrences.

Thanks in advance, and happy holidays!

[rmartini]

I don't have any insight on data being overwritten by another user (definitely open a ticket with Instructure if you haven't already!) but I can confirm that I will see users display even when the visible text doesn't match what I'm searching for. The case I'm thinking of is a subaccount admin who is associated with about 20 test accounts used by the department. The admin's email doesn't appear anywhere in the profile of these accounts (it's not the Login ID, SIS ID, nor integration ID), but the test accounts always show up when I search for the admin's ID and email on the People page as an admin. This has never been an issue for normal accounts that are generated for teachers, students, staff, etc. Our guest accounts are manually created though a separate system--so the admin's email must appear somewhere else in what I'm searching for. I don't have root account admin access, so I can't see everything on a user's profile, but I suspect the email appears somewhere there.