FEEDBACK OPPORTUNITY: Account level calendars

[AllisonHowell]

We've heard you, loud and clear. You want the ability to create calendar events at the account and sub account levels, but with so many of you connected to dozens if not hundreds of accounts, we need your input to get this right. We'd appreciate you giving us your feedback through this short survey activity. Click below to get started. 

Account level calendar survey 

Note: The survey will ask for permission to record you interacting with mock ups. This is optional! You can still take the entire survey even if you decline recording.

[audra_agnelly]

Awesome news!

[chriscas]

In addition to the steps included in the survey, I just wanted to quickly mention that it what we'd really love to see is the ability to have a calendar in Canvas populated form an external feed/source.  We don't really want to duplicate all of our campus events in multiple places, but it would be great if students could see them everywhere.  Having this kind of functionality would make the account level calendar extremely useful for us!

-Chros

[AllisonHowell]

Thanks for the feedback, @chriscas! 

[ProfessorBeyrer]

@chriscas makes an excellent point and something I wish I had included as I completed the Maze. Feeding into the Canvas Calendar would be especially helpful for my coworkers who already create events for college calendars, especially those events that are suitable for students, employees, and our local community.

One of the things I shared is I hope that users can have calendars added based on their roles within the institution. For example, at my college our professional development team communicates upcoming opportunities via email. Automatically adding a "PD" calendar to all employees' Canvas calendars would make our PD offerings more visible.

[BethCrook]

My Communications gal and Design Director came to me just this morning with a brainstorming request in regards to our current academic planner in relation to account level calendar needs.  And here's a quote from our conversation that I wanted to share.  Feel free to send along. 😂. No pressure!

"I mean, I don’t know that there is going to be a one-size fits all in this scenario and if there was (not to be snarky in any way, shape or form), I feel like it would be through Canvas which we’re already running the students all through. Canvas likes to do the impossible. I have the impossible for them to try to do. 😂"

[cms_hickss]

Two questions from UCF:

1) Will there be a set (add/create, edit. delete) of permissions for access to the "account-level" calendars? So this access could be granted to certain roles.

2) Will you be able to target roles (student, teacher, etc) with the calendar entries?

[AllisonHowell]

@cms_hickss Great questions! 

1) Yes, we are planning to give two levels of permissions. The first will be the ability to toggle calendar visibility on and off. This is so that admins can control what calendars will be available for their students and teachers to add to their own calendars. Many sub-accounts may not have names that make sense, or will have no need for a calendar. The second permission will be to add/edit/delete events for visible calendars. 

2) We want to get this out to everyone and see what kind of feedback we receive before deciding to add additional functionality, so we haven't added the ability to target roles. How are you thinking of using that kind of functionality?

@BethCrook I love it! 

@ProfessorBeyrer We saw that feedback in the Maze and appreciate it. Also appreciate you letting us know about your role question, similar to others. We are hoping to get this initial feature out there for you all to use and let us know how it is (or isn't) meeting your needs. 

[milesl]

We're very interested in this functionality as it poses an opportunity to support instructors:

Our students have the ability to request an alternative exam time if a scheduled exam conflicts with a religious holiday. Instructors are not required to avoid scheduling an exam that conflicts with a holiday--sometimes that's unavoidable, but by populating the Canvas calendar with holidays, instructors could be better informed, and schedule exams at the times that are the least likely to require them to grant accommodations, thus saving them time and effort.

So a very helpful addition to this idea would be to integrate these account calendars into the assignment due date date picker.

[angelah]

We need an account level calendar in order to publish closed school closures, holidays, etc.