New delayed announcements "posted on" date makes notifications useless

[fterranova1]

So now the "posted on" date for delayed announcements is when you actually create the announcement, not when it is available for viewing.

In the past, I have relied on the delayed announcement feature to send an email/push notification to students when the announcement was actually available to them (i.e., when it was "posted" as they saw it).

So the problem is this...

I've imported and/or created most of my announcements for the semester back in July/early August.  Before any students were enrolled in my fall courses, obviously.

Because the "posted on" dates for these announcements is July/early August, it seems no notifications are being sent when they become "available."  At least no notification is being sent to me (the instructor).

Is there a workaround?  Am I missing something?

[PaulNagami]

Hmm. I set up delayed announcements this summer and it SEEMS to be working for me - for exxample, I scheduled an announcement for Sept 6 earlier this summer and I got the notification this morning. Looking ahead at the announcements to come, they have banners that say things like "This announcement will not be visible until Nov 29 9am." Do yours have that banner?

EDIT: It also failed for me on one class!

[fterranova1]

They do have that banner.

And it seems that some of the announcements I set up will send notifications.  But many do not.

I have no idea what's going on.

[JamesSekcienski]

@fterranova1 

It would be good to report this issue to Canvas Support (How do I contact Canvas Support?) so they can add it to the ticket that engineers are working on resolving.  This way you should also get notified when the issue is resolved.  It may be related to this Known Issue, even though it isn't exactly the same issue necessarily: [OPEN] Editing an announcement but not the "available from" date breaks notifications 

In my own testing recently, I ended up finding that the notifications for a delayed post were still going to students when I didn't edit the post, but I as the teacher was not receiving a notification like I usually do.  If the announcement posts immediately, I receive the notification, but it seems there is a bug they are working on to get the notification to send to teachers for delayed announcements.

[fterranova1]

Ok, so you're saying that your students have confirmed with you that they are receiving notifications for every announcement you have set to go off at a certain date/time?  And, they are getting the notifications at that time?

And what has changed is that you, as the instructor, are not getting those announcements (as you had in the past)?

If so, then I guess that's a little better than what I'd feared.  That being that when I don't get a notification of a posted announcement, my students aren't getting the notification, either.

[Code-with-Ski]

@fterranova1 

Yes, I was able to confirm that even though I wasn't receiving the notification as the teacher, the student account I was using for testing did receive a notification shortly after the delayed announcement posted.  I didn't edit the delayed announcement after creating it, so that may have helped to ensure the notifications still worked for students at least.

If you have edited a delayed announcement, but didn't adjust the "Available from" date, notifications may be fully broken (based on the Known Issue description) and not send to students either even if you try to edit it again.  If you are unsure if you have edited a delayed post after making it and it still hasn't posted, you could consider creating a new delayed announcement and making sure you don't edit it after you save it.  After making the new copy, you could delete the old one.

[PaulNagami]

Ignore my earlier comment about it working! It also failed for me on one class.

I spent considerable time this summer pre-writing announcements for all 4 of my Canvas classes.

Was that time wasted? Is there a fix to guarantee they go through?

EDIT: I'm going to try the following.

1. Edit the announcement that was supposed to go out yesterday.
2. Change the date to tomorrow.
3. Click "Save and Do Not Send" on the 'edit notification' prompt, since I do NOT want students to be spammed every time I edit a future announcement, and need to make sure this works.

I'll post here with whether the workaround works. I'm also going to ask my class if they got the announcement yesterday or tomorrow when I have class again.

EDIT: It did not work, as far as I can tell.

[PaulNagami]

Update: I did not receive a notification for this. I am going to have to remake all of my announcements in all four courses. They are weekly, so that is about 60 announcements to remake manually.

[MichelleKainen]

I have a slightly different issue of the same problem.  I also import my announcements from prior semesters, but like to customize them the night before they are scheduled to post.  I schedule them on the first day of the new week, but I'm usually getting ready for my day job and don't have time to post my weekly announcement in the mornings.

However, rather than sending out my weekly messages on the first day of the week (as scheduled), if I edit them, it sends out the notifications immediately when I save the edits. 

I wish they would fix this.  I really want the notifications to go out at the same time the announcement is visible.  

[PaulNagami]

I'm working on a desktop. When I edit, I get a dialog box asking if I want to Save and Not Send a notification, or Save (and send). I was clicking Save and Not Send. Are you clicking Save (which sends)?

Either way, based on all the comment chains above and my experiment this weekend, it seems to be unreliable at best. If I had to give advice (which you should take with a grain of salt, because I have no idea what's going on behind the scenes), it would be that if you need to edit an announcement, open it, click edit, copy all of the text, make a new announcement, paste the text, and delete the old one.

I am doing this many many times now!

[lshulman]

I too have been having this problem... as instructor, I gave NOT been getting any announcement notifications. Not the ones with delayed posting, nor the ones that post immediately, nor those I have edited after they have posted. 

I sent a notice to Canvas Support. They have been very responsive. They have informed me that students ARE getting the notifications, even though instructors do not get them. They recently informed me that the problem has been solved, but it has NOT been solved. I have informed them the problem is still ongoing. 

Not sure I can trust what Canvas support is telling me (that students get the notifications). My class is a synchronous Zoom class. When we meet next week I will ask students if they are getting email notifications from Canvas announcements. Not sure I can trust what Canvas support is telling me (that students get the notifications)

[venitk]

@TamasBalogh  Just making sure you see this thread.

[TamasBalogh]

Thank you @venitk!

@lshulman, the fix is indeed out both in Beta and Prod so Support is right. It is strange you are still experiencing the issue. Is the "Announcement Created By You" setting turned on? 
Students should get the notification as the issue was around notification for your own announcements.

[lshulman]

I have checked my notifications. They are set properly. Have not been changed for years. I was getting my notifications prior to the forced use of the Redesign. Have gotten NO announcement notifications since then.

Canvas support keeps telling me the problem is fixed. But I am still not getting the notifications. I have "reopened" the case twice now. 

[DavidSchlater]

Support told one of our instructors, that for announcements copied from a past class, you can't just change dates and have notifications go out, you must press the RESET button for dates, and then change dates for notifications to be sent. Can someone confirm this and also explain the use case for needing a RESET dates button as opposed to just changing dates, which seems more intuitive... case 11206903

[saltman]

This is all very interesting to me.  I weekly create announcements for 30 classes, set the date available, and then copy to the other 29 shells. So I wonder if people are being notified and when.

The reason I ended up on the forums is that I wanted to find a quicker way to copy to multiple classes.  Currently, I click three dot menu in announcement>copy to...>copy/paste in the number of the next course>select the correct course>click copy>click close

It is a lot of clicks when you multiply that by 29.

I tried sending to commons, and I could post to multiple courses at one time, but the available date setting disappears, so I can't set those to post at 8am on Monday morning.

Anyway, I will follow this post to see if people are seeing progress! It sounds like the announcements still show up on time, but that maybe people won't be notified.

[dspiel]

Use BluePrint courses for this. No reason you have to copy 29 times. You can just have the discussion within the BluePrint and copy that one item to all 29 by clicking the sync button.