Some students taken to Welcome Aboard screen, some students taken to login screen and can't access course

[tregg76]

We are new to using Canvas and having a very difficult time getting students into their courses 

We imported students using the users SIS import - this does not email students with any instructions to sign up

We then open the course, go to People, click the +People button, and add in the list of SIS ids. We did this with some test accounts first and those worked fine - we received the "Course Invitation" email that contained the "Get Started" link to allow us to create a new account. 

However more than half of our students have emailed in saying that while they get the "Course Invitation" email with the "Get Started" link, that Get Started link doesn't take them to the Welcome Aboard screen (as described here)

[Chris_Hofer]

@tregg76 ...

Full disclosure, the information I will share here is just what I remember from well over a year ago when I worked at a technical college in Wisconsin.  I'm not sure if any processes have changed since then.  Also, I was a Canvas admin there, but I did not work directly with sending data over from our SIS (Student Information System) which was Banner to Canvas, so I don't know all the details into how that all worked.  Here is what I recall, though.

First, I believe there was a way that our students were emailed after they were enrolled in one or more Canvas courses.  I am not sure what that email looked like, though.

Second, I know there were at least two (if not three) daily files that were sent from our SIS to Canvas.  One file was the file that created the user accounts in Canvas.  Another file created the Canvas course shells.  The third file was the one that enrolled users into those courses.  So, your process of having to go into each course and add students via SIS ID sounds time consuming to me...and not really necessary?

I'm not sure what SIS your school uses, and I wouldn't be of much help in that realm, unfortunately.  Hopefully my response will be of some help in one way or another, though.  I'm hopeful that someone else will be able to chime in that could be of more help.

[tregg76]

Hi @Chris_Hofer Thanks for the reply. We're a unique nonprofit that offers a very small number of "courses", more like info sessions for students. But this all sounds correct, "One file was the file that created the user accounts in Canvas.  Another file created the Canvas course shells.  The third file was the one that enrolled users into those courses" - I'm not sure why our team adds scholars via the People button vs an enrollment import (that's the the 3rd one you mentioned). But this might be something for me to look into. Unfortunately, my team didn't document processes when we onboarded Canvas, so until we can get a meeting with our rep I'm totally in the dark on the appropriate way to onboard students and haven't found anything anywhere online, it's been frustrating. But thank you for your reply, its helpful to know what the right route might be!