Images not showing in Announcement RSS Feed

[tengrrl]

Hi all,

Looking for some help with images from Announcements. This is a little complex and probably unusual (call me an outlier, trying crazy things). Stay with me while I explain.

I have a Canvas course at Virginia Tech. I often add images to my Announcements for the course. That part all works just fine.

I have my students using Microsoft Teams for project group discussion. I have a Workflow in Teams that posts the Announcement RSS feed to the General Channel. When I post an Announcement in Canvas, the Workflow automatically posts the details in the General Channel, as triggered by the RSS Feed. The basics of that process work. (Have I lost you yet?)

The images from the Canvas Announcement are NOT showing up in the RSS feed-driven posts however. The text is there. The images are not. I can't figure out why.

In case you're wondering, Teams will not let me edit the posts to add the images because Workflows (not me) is the author. 

If you have any idea what's going wrong or can suggest a work-around, I'd be much obliged.

Thanks for reading,

Traci Gardner

[ProfessorBeyrer · Accepted solution]

The Community is a perfect place to foster connections among outliers trying crazy things are among the most creative people around, @tengrrl. 💡

I've run into the same problem with announcement notifications, and I bet whatever's in the code is causing both problems. I like to include videos for my fully online classes, but I learned that neither the embedded video nor even a thumbnail are included in the email notification. So I now include words like "The video embedded in this announcement includes..." as a way to encourage students to view the announcement in Canvas.

Alas, this has been a challenge for awhile and improving this has already been proposed via the Ideas and Themes process:

[Notifications] Formatting of Announcement Notific... - Instructure Community - 367445

As you can see from the page, the idea has been added to a theme, which means it's ready to receive attention from Instructure's developers. We don't know when that will occur, however, so my best suggestion is to include wording in the announcement that lets students know that the announcement has an image (or is best viewed in Canvas).

I realize this answer does is not a perfect solution to the problem you described, but I’m going to mark it as such and hope that our colleagues who have a similar challenge will find the best way to contribute. Hopefully the linked idea will be developed soon.

[ProfessorBeyrer · Accepted solution]

The Community is a perfect place to foster connections among outliers trying crazy things are among the most creative people around, @tengrrl. 💡

I've run into the same problem with announcement notifications, and I bet whatever's in the code is causing both problems. I like to include videos for my fully online classes, but I learned that neither the embedded video nor even a thumbnail are included in the email notification. So I now include words like "The video embedded in this announcement includes..." as a way to encourage students to view the announcement in Canvas.

Alas, this has been a challenge for awhile and improving this has already been proposed via the Ideas and Themes process:

[Notifications] Formatting of Announcement Notific... - Instructure Community - 367445

As you can see from the page, the idea has been added to a theme, which means it's ready to receive attention from Instructure's developers. We don't know when that will occur, however, so my best suggestion is to include wording in the announcement that lets students know that the announcement has an image (or is best viewed in Canvas).

I realize this answer does is not a perfect solution to the problem you described, but I’m going to mark it as such and hope that our colleagues who have a similar challenge will find the best way to contribute. Hopefully the linked idea will be developed soon.

[tengrrl · Accepted solution]

Thanks @ProfessorBeyrer! Glad to know I'm not alone. I played around with the issue some more last night, and I've found a work-around. 

Canvas is using links that only work in Canvas. For instance, one announcement used: https://canvas.vt.edu/courses/196807/files/34828629/preview. Webpages outside Canvas can't make that image appear.

Solution: I uploaded the image to my own webserver, so I had a traditional link to an image, like this one: https://tracigardner.github.io/TechComm/-images/noun-brain-waves-7173307-861F41.png. If I use that URL in the Announcement, the image shows up in the RSS feed-driven post in Teams.

I put the image on my server because that is easiest for me, but you could upload the image anywhere that will give you a normal link to the image (e.g., Flickr, Google Photos, Dropbox).