Turn off inbox messaging or get it forwarded

[jbess]

I really do not want to check Canvas and my email for student questions. How can I either disable inbox messages or have them forwarded to my email account?

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi  @jbess ​...

All of your communication methods are set up through your profile in Canvas.  You can choose the kinds of way you want to be contacted (e-mail, text message, Twitter, etc.) and also the frequency of those notifications (right away, daily, weekly, not at all).  Here are a bunch of Canvas Guides on how to set notification preferences.  Hopefully, this info should get you on the right track:

How do Notification Preferences work?

How do I set my Notification Preferences? 

What are the default Canvas Notification Preferences?

[Stef_retired]

 @jbess ​, you cannot disable Inbox messages; the Canvas Inbox is an integral part of the Canvas learning platform, and I hope over time you will find that you can accomplish more in the Inbox than simply checking students' questions: see What is Conversations? for an overview of the Canvas Inbox.

However, you can choose to conduct all of your communications with students via your external email by setting your notification preferences to have Canvas Inbox messages sent ASAP to the email account of your choice. You can then reply to the messages directly from your external email, and a copy of your replies will be preserved in the Canvas Inbox.

Here are some lessons from the Canvas Guides that will help you manage your notification preferences:

How do Notification Preferences work?

What are the default Canvas Notification Preferences?

How do I set my Notification Preferences?

[kyh802]

The trouble with the forwarding method that Canvas uses is that hitting "reply" responds via the Canvas system and not to the student's email, which means links and images don't work. I'm really not sure how it can be so integral when it functions so poorly.

[mdurler]

not a solution.  Would prefer to have ability to turn off the inbox at a course level

[jessica422]

I have never heard of institution that did not have an institution-provided e mail system. LMS come and go. Every institution I've been at as a student and an instructor has gone through at least two during my time there. As an instructor, I do NOT want messages to be sent through canvas. I want all messages in my official campus inbox so I can keep them there if needed if we ever change LMS again. "You can have canvas forward messages to you!" Yes, you can, but it is ridiculously annoying and messy to deal have a thread in that manner. And no matter what I do with my settings, most of the time these get sent to "spam" or "other". Along with this, I'd like to turn off student ability to comment on assignments as they keep trying to upload their assignment via comments instead of submitting it the proper way as instructed. It's especially troublesome when they try to submit work via comments after an assignment is closed. There is absolutely nothing wrong with instructors wanting their communication to take place outside of canvas and I have no idea why people keep acting like instructors are unreasonable for wanting the ability to control that.

[ndarnton]

Also, forwarded emails do not thread correctly and search (for instance, for a particular student sender) breaks because they all show up as being "from Canvas".

[marymixon]

Students shouldn't need to email other students in Canvas. Students are only emailing their peers inappropriate comments. They only person a student should need to email in Canvas is their teacher.

[mdurler]

PLEASE tell me this will change.  The email system in Canvas is absolutely terrible.

[Stef_retired]

 @mdurler ​, if you wish to provide feedback about the Canvas Inbox, consider asking to be invited to this group: Canvas Focus Group: Conversations RCE​--or submit a new feature idea with your ideas about how to change the Canvas conversations (not email) feature: How do I create a new feature idea?​

[jperkins · Accepted solution]

There is an institutional level feature that we can turn on for your institution that allows a user to opt out of the inbox messages and have them directly forwarded to your school email account. You'll have to talk with your CSM about getting it turned on for you. If you're not the Admin for your account, reach out to them and see if you could get it turned on. It'll be a checkbox in your personal settings. Just an FYI.

[Stef_retired]

Thanks for that clarification,  @jperkins  I'll make a note of that in case it ever comes up again.

[alfredo_alcanta]

stefaniesanders Is there a way to set up a vacation responder in Canvas Conversations?  I need to find a way to let people know I'm away when they send me notes through Canvas.

[Stef_retired]

 @alfredo_alcanta ​, the Canvas Inbox does not currently have an away message or vacation responder capability. If this is a feature that you would like to see implemented, you might want to write up a submission to Canvas Feature Ideas​, using the guidelines in this document to write your request: How to write a good feature idea submission​

[relton_mcburrow]

We'd like to pursue this option.  Is this option something that still exists?

[kona]

 @relton_mcburrow , yes, you would need to contact the CSM for your Institution about getting the Inbox turned off.

[relton_mcburrow]

Thank you!  Our CMS wasn't aware on this feature. Can we get some guidance as to how to enable? Our district is looking for an immediate long term solution for eliminating student use of the Inbox (Canvas Messaging).

[kona]

Your CSM should be able to talk to some of the other CSM's or their supervisor to get information on how to do this. I'll also ping someone higher up to see if they can help.

[relton_mcburrow]

Great! He's doing just that right now. I also reached out to Jeremy to see if he had some info to add.

[kona]

Awesome! Sounds like you are moving in the right direction to get this taken care of!

[jcavelos]

I use the free version of Canvas for classes offered by the small nonprofit I run.  Do we have the option of turning off the inbox?  Can you point me to directions for doing that?

[jperkins]

I just want to clarify for everyone that this feature is an opt-in feature. Here is the actual description associated with the feature flag.

Allow users to opt out of the Conversation's Inbox. This will cause all conversation messages and notifications to be sent as ASAP notifications to the user's primary email, hide the Conversation's Inbox unread messages badge on the Inbox, and hide the Conversation's notification preferences.

[kona]

Thanks for the clarification  @jperkins !

[relton_mcburrow]

I would imagine that there has got to be some sort of coding that could block or re-route messages as they are sent through Canvas servers.

[s_eberhard]

Thanks Jeremy.

This is very interesting.

I have a few questions, if we turn this on for our institution

1. Does this apply to both staff and students? (ie. anyone in the institution can opt out of the Inbox and just check their emails) - I'm assuming this is the case.

2. What happens if Person A opts out of the Inbox; used their email client (we also use Outlook for staff; gmail for students) to respond to Inbox messages (conversations). Some weeks later, they decided to turn it back on, will they be able to see all the past conversations in their Inbox?

Thanks.

Regards,

Sally

[jperkins]

Sally,

1. It is for all users.

2. The messages are still tracked in the inbox, all that is really happening is turning off notifications in Canvas. They'll no longer get a "ticker" in Canvas indicating unread messages. At least that is my understanding...

[s_eberhard]

Wow, thank you so much for the super quick response and all the information!!

[RobDitto]

We use this option at my institution. Notifications for Conversations occur ASAP; what's removed is the indicator count of unread Inbox messages.

[ted_curran]

Hi @Jeremy,

Just a clarification --

Would we have to decide one way or another at an Account level whether we want to use the Inbox? We host multiple client campuses in different subaccounts in our Canvas account, and one client wants to disable their Inbox. If we did that, we would still want Inbox capabilities in our other subaccounts. Is that even possible?

Thanks-

Ted

[RobDitto]

My sense is that this would be more about arranging for the Conversations Inbox Opt Out feature account-wide, and then publicizing it to users of the sub-account which wishes to limit use of the Inbox. (There's really no disabling Canvas messaging; Opt Out is just a way to limit needs to interact with the Inbox.)

[floxic]

Is there some way to set up an auto-reply to Canvas messages? I don't check them and I put in all my syllabuses that the only way they should contact me is email. I would like to set up some kind of auto-reply like "Your instructor does not check Canvas, email them as per the syllabus", alternitively it would be nice to just completely disable Canvas messages so they get a generic "message could not be sent" error. Thank you in advance. 

[Chris_Hofer]

@floxic ...

Your school's Canvas administrator can enable two different settings for the Canvas Inbox: signatures and auto-responses.  If you scroll about half-way down this Guide: How do I set details for an account? - Instructure Community - 194, you'll see a section on "View Features".  The two check-boxes labeled #4 and #5 are the settings I've mentioned.

So, you would need to speak with your school's Online Learning / eLearning / Distance Education team to see if they would be willing to turn either or both of these on for your entire school (so it wouldn't just be you that would have the options).

Hopefully you'll be able to get in touch with someone at your school soon.  Good luck!

[peebrph]

Hello there. I'm the admin for AJAC (ajac.instructure.com) and to turn on the feature that can automatically send messages to an instructor's email. how do I go about doing that?

[gpoynter]

I don't understand how to turn of the inbox messages either.

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi  @gpoynter ​...

As stefaniesanders​ has mentioned in her posting above, this is not an option that you can just turn off by yourself.   @jperkins ​ (above) added that there is an institutional level feature which would allow this, but your Canvas team at your school would have to talk with their CSM (Customer Success Manager) at Instructure.

[canvas_admin]

Just FYI, if you have notifications set to receive an e-mail when a student sends you a Canvas message, then you can simply reply to the e-mail from within your e-mail client (We use Outlook) and it will "reply" to the student's Canvas message.   This is my setup and I don't have to check 2 places. I simply reply to everything from within my e-mail client.

[canvas_admin]

In addition to my above post, just make sure you don't include the original e-mail in the reply from your e-mail client. If you do, this will cause the original post to be included in your reply in Canvas.   I usually hit Cmd-A (Ctrl-A on PC) to select all and hit "delete" before I start my response.

[s_eberhard]

"Allow users to opt out of the Conversation's Inbox. This will cause all conversation messages and notifications to be sent as ASAP notifications to the user's primary email, hide the Conversation's Inbox unread messages badge on the Inbox, and hide the Conversation's notification preferences."

Sorry for being slow here, so the Inbox icon will remain, just the unread message badge will disappear?

[RobDitto]

Yes, that is correct, the Inbox icon remains, but the count of unread messages will not be shown next to that icon.  This works with the old UI; we just turned on the new UI today at our institution and will need confirm whether the Conversations Inbox Opt Out feature works in the new UI. (In brief testing now I see some uncertain results...)

[mdurler]

Personally, I'd rather be able to have the entire "inbox" system disabled.  I forbid my students to send messages using it.