Inconsistent 'ObserverEnrollment' and 'TeacherEnrollment' privileges for instructors teaching 2+ course sections

[CodeFellowsDev]

We are trying to programmatically change the enrollment type of an instructor in a specific section of a course that has multiple sections where they and others are instructors. Currently, deleting their 'TeacherEnrollent' for a given section and adding them back to that section with 'ObserverEnrollment' works as expected in that they can still see student grades, but cannot change them. The problem is, if they have 'TeacherEnrollent' for any other section in the course, they’re able to still edit the grades of students they’re observing as well as all other students in the course regardless of section. If they are not an instructor in another section, then this setup works as expected.

We’ve tried limiting privileges per section by setting 'enrollment[limit_privileges_to_course_section]=true', but that has not changed or restricted grading privileges for the instructor in a given section as expected.

We’re using Canvas Free for Teacher and have successfully used the Enrollments API in the past, though not quite in this way, so it’s unclear what is missing. Any help is appreciated. 

[blopes · Accepted solution]

Hi @CodeFellowsDev 

Canvas does not support multiple roles for the same user in the same course. To have the user keep the permissions of a certain role in the course, you need to remove all other enrollments with different roles of that user from that course (even completed enrollments). They can only have one role, otherwise, Canvas won't know which permissions to grant them.