Who exactly will receive a global announcement sent within a subaccount?

[PaulMorsink]

We intend to make greater use of global announcements within subaccounts, but we want to better understand who exactly will receive these announcements.

The guidance in the Instructure Admin Guide (https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Admin-Guide/How-do-I-create-a-global-announcement-in-an-account/t...) is helpful to a point. The guide states, for example, that "Global announcements and notifications are only sent to users with active enrollments in the current term" and "Global announcements are not displayed to users with manually concluded and inactive enrollments." 

We would like to confirm (for example) that if we send a global subaccount announcement to students in that subaccount, the announcement will be sent only to students who--on the send date--are enrolled in a current course that is "active," meaning that the send date is after that course's published start date and before its published end date. Is that right?

Is it also therefore the case that if we want to use a global announcement to reach all students who are about to start a new academic session a day or two before the session's published start date, the announcement will not reach these students? To reach these students a day or two before that session start date, we would need to change our course dates to have them open a couple of days earlier?

Finally, we'd like to confirm how a global announcement will work for faculty/teacher recipients. Will a global announcement to faculty/teachers reach them if it is sent a couple of days before an academic session's start date? Faculty/teachers can access the course(s) they're assigned to teach prior to the start of the academic session, and they are enrolled in the course that hasn't yet opened to students. Will they receive the pre-session global announcement sent to just faculty/teachers?

Thank you for clarifying how the global announcements work!

[jsowalsk]

Hi @PaulMorsink 

Individuals can only view sub-account announcements once they have been added to a course within the sub-account. Courses do not have to be published for users to view sub-account announcements. I hope this helps clarify things.

[PaulMorsink]

Thanks for that clarification. I have a follow-up question: Will a global announcement sent to a sub-account go out to every individual who is now, or has ever in the past, been added to a course within the sub-account, including students in upcoming courses that have not yet been published, and also students in courses that ran years ago?

The context for this question is that we're trying to find efficient ways to communicate with particular subsets of our student population, and the option to send a global announcement within a subaccount looks promising--but we want the announcement to reach only students currently enrolled in active courses and students enrolled in courses that are about to start (but haven't yet officially opened to students). We do not want these announcements to reach students from past semesters who are no longer enrolled.

Thank you for your help!

[jsowalsk · Accepted solution]

@PaulMorsink As vague as what I wrote previously, I hope this information is helpful: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-add-an-announcement-in-a-course/ta-p/11... In addition, to answer: who is now, or has ever in the past, been added to a course within the sub-account, including students in upcoming courses that have not yet been published, and also students in courses that ran years ago, those who are now, in the past or have been added to a course, students in upcoming courses even if they are not published WILL see the announcements. What if you used the inbox to message particular courses instead? But students who are not published courses will not see the message: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Student-Guide/How-do-I-send-a-message-to-a-user-in-a-course-in-th...