It’s Time for Your Feedback on the Future of Ideas & Themes

[ruthfoulkrod]

We’ve come a long way together, navigating the ups and downs of our Ideas & Themes process. From early conversations around improving how we handle customer feedback to the lessons learned from the different approaches we’ve tried, your participation has been invaluable in shaping our path forward. We recognize that the road has been bumpy, and we’re grateful for your patience and input along the way.

As many of you know, the Ideas & Themes process has evolved over the years, with the goal of collecting, prioritizing, acting, and communicating on your feedback as seamlessly as possible. We’ve heard your frustrations about lack of transparency and the need for better communication around what happens to your ideas. 

We have drafted a revised process including a more user-friendly and communications oriented tool and are excited to share it with you to gather your feedback. We’re opening up a ‘comment period’ to solicit input/feedback from our valued community. This is in addition to live conversations we aim to have with many of our institutions.

Moving Away from Themes

Many of you have voiced concerns about the current theme voting approach, especially around transparency and the disconnect between aggregated themes and the lost detail of your specific needs. In previous discussions, community members have highlighted frustrations with the lack of clarity in how themes are selected and prioritized. We’ve also heard that focusing on broader themes has often delayed attention to more specific ideas, limiting our ability to address issues effectively and promptly.

In response to this feedback, we’re shifting our focus from themes to individual ideas. While static themes will still exist in the background to organize ideas, our main focus will be on the detailed ideas themselves. Our goal is to ensure each idea gets the visibility and consideration it deserves, addressing the needs you’ve expressed, and clarity on if we are, or are not doing it, and the SLAs for a response.

Transition Period

As we transition away from theme voting, you’ll notice some temporary changes. Here’s what you need to know:

What happens to comments and votes on themes? Your valuable input won’t be lost. While they will eventually no longer be publicly visible, they will be ingested into our new tool and serve as essential data points for our Product Team.

When will voting on individual ideas return? Assuming we’re aligned on this approach, during our ‘comment period’, our next focus will be on streamlining your workflow and importing existing ideas for the new process. Voting will resume once we have the updated system in place, in beta by December 2024 (assuming the community is aligned with the approach we’re proposing). During this transition period commenting and voting will be temporarily unavailable to allow us to bring ideas over and prevent any data loss. We appreciate your patience!

Introducing the New Tool

To support this shift, we’re excited to introduce a new tool designed to streamline the process for submitting, voting on, and tracking ideas. This update will bring several key benefits:

• Voting and Commenting: You’ll be able to vote on ideas and leave comments to engage with others and clarify suggestions. The process will be efficient and intuitive.
• Improved Tracking: You’ll always know where your idea stands, with real-time updates on its status– whether it’s under review, in development, completed, or anywhere else in the cycle.
• Simplified Submission Process: Idea submissions will be accessible through a common landing page in the Community. The user-friendly platform will allow you to seamlessly log-in and track your ideas with your existing Canvas account (the same one you use to log into the community).
• Integration with Development Tools: Behind the scenes, this tool connects directly with our development systems, helping us act on your feedback faster and sync statuses, so you get updates during the process on the status of your idea.
• Product Enablement: Enhanced transparency is at the core of this update, empowering our Product team to communicate more frequently about the status of your ideas and the reasoning behind our decisions.

 Access the feature request portal directly through the Instructure Community homepage, where you can easily navigate to submit your ideas and feedback.

The new portal for submitting ideas simplifies the process, allowing you to quickly share your ideas with us.

The Idea Lifecycle

To give you a better understanding of how your ideas will be handled in this new process, we’ve outlined the proposed lifecycle of an idea. From submission to final release, each step is designed to provide transparency, timely updates, and clarity about where your feedback stands. Here’s a look at what would happen after you submit an idea and how it would evolve through the process:

• Submission: Submit your ideas directly through the Community platform at any time. Vote on other ideas at any time.

• Initial Review (2 weeks)
  • Triage Process: Ideas are reviewed by an internal team to remove duplicates, merged with identical ideas, and assigned to a relevant brand and theme.
  • Product Evaluation: The product manager assesses whether the idea will be pursued. You’ll receive updates on your idea’s status within 10 business days.
  • Status Assignment: Ideas are assigned one of two main statuses:
    • Not Prioritized: Either temporarily, with a re-review every six months, or permanently with an option for the customer to resubmit). If there’s a reason why something can’t be prioritized, the PM will note that in the idea. 
  • Prioritized for Discovery & Development: The idea enters our development process. Some ideas are easy and go right to development. Others are harder and require some discovery work before we can begin development. On rare occasions, discovery may reveal a larger issue that might require an idea to go back into a ‘Not Prioritized’ status.

• Development & Release Process (length varies, but not to exceed 2 quarters)
  • If chosen, your idea will be incorporated into planning, added to the backlog for discovery or delivery, and worked on by our product and engineering teams. Depending on complexity, ideas may be completed quickly, or could take multiple quarters to complete.
  • If you recall, we also started our Customer Discovery Sessions last year, so some of the more complex ideas will be surfaced with this group for further discussion.
  • To keep you in the loop on where in the process your idea is, once prioritized for development, your idea will appear on the roadmap.
  • Launch and Release: Upon launch of the feature, your idea will appear in all the usual release channels including release notes and other resources. The idea requestor as well as anyone voting or commenting on the idea will get an update that it has been released.

• Continuous Cycle: New ideas can be submitted anytime, and voting and commenting can always be done on any ideas not yet prioritized for discovery & delivery.

As your ideas move through this lifecycle, our goal is to ensure that you stay informed every step of the way. We’re committed to providing updates, explanations, and a clear sense of where each idea stands within our process. By streamlining these stages and enhancing communication, we hope to foster a more collaborative environment where your feedback is valued and effectively acted upon.

Our Commitment to You

Your experience and feedback are our top priorities. Here’s what you can expect from our new approach:

• Consolidated Backlog: Everything you’ve submitted before will still be part of the conversation. No need to resubmit ideas!

• Account Linking: Each idea will be linked to the submitting account and institution via your Canvas login credentials, making tracking easier.

• Full Transparency: We’ll maintain transparency and keep you informed about your ideas, from submission to resolution, including the rationale behind important decisions.

• Prioritization Based on Feedback: Our internal teams will prioritize your feedback based on factors like upvotes and comments, to ensure that the most important ideas get the attention they deserve.

Next Steps & Your Participation

We want to hear from you! Before finalizing any decisions, we want your input. During this ‘comment period’, we encourage you to share your thoughts in the comments section of this blog post. Please submit your feedback by October 31st to help shape the final version of this new process. Once we review all input, we’ll provide a more detailed timeline for implementing the new system, which we anticipate will scale up in the new year.

Thank you for being an integral part of this journey. Your support and insights have been essential in shaping this update, and we’re excited about the future.

We look forward to your feedback and taking these next steps together!

Please Note: The feedback window is now closed. We will provide
updates soon regarding this new process and next steps.
Thank you for all your valuable feedback!

[stevenwilliams]

Thank you for these updates and the commitment to reinstating a set of processes for customers to submit, comment, and vote on feature ideas. Canvas serves a large and diverse set of customers and it's clear that this work is complicated as a result. However, Instructure's continued commitment to intake of feature ideas and ability for the community to respond to them is a key tool to deliver transparency.

As a long-time Canvas customer, this is the third iteration of the feature idea and voting process that I have seen over the last 8-10 years. The most recent efforts in this area seemed generally successful until the last time votes were solicited from the community, with a mismatch between the themes that the community selected and the ones that Instructure chose to prioritize. While I appreciate the efforts to iterate further on the most recent attempts to respond to the backlog, I don't know that a full reset feels necessary at this time. I believe customers may have been understanding that the top voted themes would not necessarily be the backlog items that would be worked on if it had been communicated that there was a need to use the voting as one of multiple inputs, and that this process would be balanced against considerations around internal prioritization or addressing use cases across a breadth of the Canvas portfolio.

A few themes and questions emerged as I reviewed this request for feedback:

• Continuity from previous system -- this post states that the current plan is that existing comments and votes "will eventually no longer be publicly visible", but will be "will be ingested into our new tool and serve as essential data points for our Product Team". I would strongly encourage your team to reconsider this, particularly in existing ideas where substantive discussion has taken place to refine the original idea submission or restate the impact of a particular request. Resetting votes for the new platform has disadvantages but may more justifiable to more accurately gauge the present day impact of any feature request. I'm also curious whether there will be any continuity of the feature idea URLs for institutions who have indexed these locally for their campus communities.
• Scale of existing backlog -- while the proposed process seems reasonable for intake and response to new ideas, I'm curious to hear more detail about how the 1669 feature ideas presently in the Canvas Community will move through this process. It's great that there is a commitment to "importing existing ideas for the new process" but the number of existing requests seems like there will be a significant time commitment
• Transparency around decision making -- the process diagram of the Idea Lifecycle is helpful but does not provide detail at this time on how the Yes/Maybe/No decisions will be made. My hope would be that a full "No" would only be done sparingly, when an idea is not achievable or not specific enough to place into a development backlog. If "No" is going to be used more widely, I hope to see the product team commit to responding to ideas placed in this status in a substantive and thoughtful manner, to ensure that the community maintains trust and support that the feature idea process is a productive and collaborative one.
• Timeline for "Reconsideration" backlog -- the Idea Lifecycle diagram suggests that Maybe/"Reconsideration" ideas would only reside in this backlog for up to six months. This does not seem like it may be an adequate amount of time, particularly considering the scale of the existing backlog. In many cases it would be preferable to keep items in this status for longer, particularly when development resources may not be immediately available. Reviewing the "Maybe" items periodically is a great idea but forcing them into Yes/No after six months may create unnecessary challenges.

[Jeff_F]

Hello! I am wondering about when a community member disagrees with an idea suggestion. Will there be a mechanism to enable a 'down vote' or are they to add comments to communicate why they disfavor the idea?

Thanks!

[LMacaulay]

As a long-time Canvas user, I am pleased to see this update that is more similar to the original processes.  I very much appreciate the ability to comment and vote at any time, rather than being forced to block significant time to participate in voting that was needed with the themes process. As @stevenwilliams stated, I am also concerned about the "maybe" backlog timeline of 6 months. There are many useful ideas that may not get prioritized, but they shouldn't just go to the "no" pile to die after 6 months.  I am also wondering that if an idea does end up in the dead pile, will another user who proposes a similar idea in the future be alerted to this or will they just end up posting the idea again, to get another possible "no" and suck resources from you to continually restate why something isn't prioritized?

[canvas_admin]

As a Canvas user and community member for over a decade now, this feels like a return to the initial way ideas/feature requests were handled which I'm all for!  In my opinion, the more complex the process, the easier it was to lose interest in engaging with ideas because it had to jump through so many loops to reach consideration.

One suggestion I have for this new process would be for more guidance feedback from the PM for ideas that are ultimately rejected. If the issue is a bigger issue on the backend than the submiter realizes, perhaps we could be guided to craft/submit a feature idea addressing that bigger issue for community interaction. We only have the user side of things when it comes to Canvas, so we are not always aware of programming issues or other issues "under the hood" so to speak. So to have more direction provided from Instructure for rejected ideas would help us to refine/fine tune our ideas to work toward whatever the larger goal may be.

[nwilson7]

@ruthfoulkrod  Am I missing where the community voting comes in?  It goes from us submitting to triage by an "internal team" to the product team deciding if can be done or not which seems to be the only two steps on the flow chart, where does the community weigh in?

-Nick

[venitk]

Thank you for this update. 

My main issue with Ideas is the disconnect between what Instructure thinks Ideas should be for and what the consumer (specifically, my team) thinks Ideas should be for. We think of Ideas as "wouldn't it be nice" items. Wouldn't it be nice to have confetti when students submit an assignment, wouldn't it be nice if students could @ mention each other in discussions. These are upgrades.

Instructure, and by that I specifically mean Tier 1 support, seems to treat ideas more broadly, including things that we consumers would consider "bad for business" faults with the software.

What happens is: we submit something that we can only imagine is a bug to Support because it's bad,  T1 looks at the documentation and determines that it's "working as intended," then tells us to submit an Idea, which we have no guarantee will be addressed timely or ever. 

Here are just a few of the recent things that my team has reported as bugs that Support has told us is Canvas functioning as intended and directing us to submit an Idea to try to get it addressed:

• In Classic quizzes, clicking Save before clicking Update Question will delete the updates to that question
• In discussions redesign, the clickable area to check and uncheck boxes extends to the right edge of the page, causing the checkbox to be mistakenly checked and unchecked (this was eventually treated as a bug after we complained to the CSM)
• If an instructor enters letter grades into a 0-point assignment, they lose grade data if they ever try to update the number of points the assignment is worth.
• In the discussion redesign, initially opening the side tray launched you to the top of the page, causing you to lose your place on the page (again, the CSM got this to be treated as a bug.)

As you can see, directing at least some of these issues to my CSM reveals that they are, in fact, bugs. 

What we really need is a step between Tier 1 determining that Canvas is functioning "as intended" and telling us to submit an idea that may or may not be addressed for several months. Perhaps something like an automatic appeal that doesn't require me to go through my CSM.

tl;dr:

If someone submits something that they believe is a bug, even if T1 determines it's functioning "as intended," perhaps Tier 1 could automatically direct that to the triage review process without needing the educator, instructional designer, or admin to go through the not-insignificant trouble of submitting an idea.

It would save us time, I would hope it would save you time, and I bet your customers would be less frustrated. If it does not pass the triage step, then Support can direct the user to submit an idea. 

[ruthfoulkrod]

@nwilson7 Hi Nick! Great question. Currently, our proposal is that votes and comments can be done at any time for submissions not prioritized for discovery and development. See under "The Idea Lifecycle:"

• Continuous Cycle: New ideas can be submitted anytime, and voting and commenting can always be done on any ideas not yet prioritized for discovery & delivery.

[TanyaUponAvon]

Hi, 

I really appreciate that this revamp work is being done on the Ideas and Themes process. I want to preface my comments below by making it clear that I find Canvas to be the best LMS I've worked with, and though I am critiquing this communication process, I belive the Canvas Community is an essential and impressive resource, overall.

I want to echo one point made by @venitk in their comments above: that there is a disconnect between the Canvas Community and the users regarding the importance of the difference between ideas (i.e., enhancements/nice to haves) and Canvas bugs/issues that should be fixed. 

I think there should be an alternative workflow for issues that we users discover (see the examples presented by @venitk), which prioritizes real existing problems with Canvas. That is, I'd like to see a separate path where we can alert you to glitches we're finding, which should really take precedence over enhancement ideas. This process should still be made transparent to users, so that we can add comments/supporting examples/upvotes. 

I realize that creating such a forum might on the surface seem unappealing to the Instructure corporation (because it would point out negatives about Canvas), but I honestly believe it would ultimately be better for both the users and Canvas because it would:

• Expedite the resolution of issues that many (if not all) users are just dealing with on their own, but which currently build user irritation with the LMS. 
• Make users feel heard by Canvas.
• Provide Canvas with user data regarding how widespread and impactful such issues are.
• Alert Canvas in a more timely manner to what really is a problem that needs to be fixed, rather than dragging such problems through a system that is designed more for enhancement ideas. 
• Improve the LMS through crowd-sourcing. (We are your ultimate beta testers!)

This alternative method of reaching Canvas with issues could be like a ticketing process (e.g., incident reports). The process could be combined with the current system of contacting the Canvas helpline (which is not available to all users). Such a marriage would also provide more transparency regarding issues that are reported through the Canvas helpline. (Currently, it appears that we are left waiting for responses from Canvas without access to an issue tracking system--not knowing whether or when our concerns/questions may be dropped). 

Not everything users have to say about Canvas is an "idea." Canvas is a tool; of course it has issues, like all tools. Forcing us to submit information about the glitches we find into the framework of "ideas" minimizes our concerns and obfuscates real problems. I suppose someone in PR is probably responsible for limiting user input to "ideas and themes," so that our feedback is always framed in a nice, uncritical package. However, the effect on anyone who has an actual issue to report is frustration with the Canvas communication system. Let's not pretend that valid issues with the tool are just "ideas." I'd prefer Canvas to open an honest, straightforward dialogue with us about making practical fixes (and no, product updates do not constitute a dialogue).

We're all in the business of education/learning. An essential part of that process is aquiring feedback on what is not working well, so that we can improve the teaching. Your user base is generally aware of this, and we're professionals. I believe users would feel more respected if we could all admit Canvas isn't absolutely perfect as it is, and just get down to collaborating on making it better.

Thanks, 

Tanya

[nwilson7]

Maybe others feel different but is there a way to include the community earlier in the process?  Based on the response that voting is only for the "Continuous Cycle: New ideas can be submitted anytime, and voting and commenting can always be done on any ideas not yet prioritized for discovery & delivery", the community only gets to weigh in on the "maybe" items that in theory have been "rejected" once by the product team. - Again, maybe others feel this is the best way to do it.

While there are aspects that are nice about an idea going directly to the product team, there are lots of ideas in the current idea area that I think the majority of Canvas users would NOT like to see developed even though one user/institution does want it.  If it is an additive change like the confetti that can be turned off, that is one thing but if it changes the functionality of Canvas based on a single person wanting a change, that seems problematic to me.  How will Instructure ensure users actually want the change made?

I also agree with the conversation above that too many things are considered an "idea" when in fact they are the way Canvas should function.  I think there is a difference between, "while it is functioning as we built it, we understand that is not desirable" and a feature option/upgrade.  Maybe add two paths, where what many users would call an error (trying not to call it a bug since Instructure uses that for things not working as built) and legit changes to the system, such as a new question type in quizzes, where the latter would go through a voting process.

I may be way off from how others feel but adding to the conversation 😉

-Nick

[KNGoh]

@ttan and @venitk are making great points!

A more definitive separation between ideas and bugs is crucial.

Too often, we have begun with optimism, diligently documenting issues and submitting detailed tickets, only to receive a "working as intended" reply. This response is given despite our comprehensive explanations and screen/video captures that clearly demonstrate the presence of a bug during normal use of Canvas.

Labeling "bugs" as ideas, as frequently advised by L1, creates confusion and hinders the resolution of actual problems. Additionally, it obscures valuable ideas, preventing them from receiving the attention they deserve.

[JuliaDohr]

I agree with the previous speakers: Too many different types of content were lumped together under the previous "Ideas" because there was no way to differentiate internally. We were then asked to say through other channels how we would prioritize "Ideas", which again seems less transparent and duplicates work. In my opinion, the key distinction should also be between features and bugs. And within features, there are fine distinctions between "nice to have" additions and behavior that is really extremely problematic for the institution.

[JuliaDohr]

P.S. We just started collecting "ideas" this fall, so we have no experience with how the process was organized before. However, I have noticed 3 things about the current process:

1) Displaying related "ideas" by title usually resulted in completely different topics, and at the same time did not result in duplicates being found. I wouldn't mind if you categorized/keyworded the content yourself in a meaningful way - so that the search engine in the background could deliver better results.

2. I often wish there were more formatting options for the text right from the start. I had to submit everything and then click Edit to add highlights, paragraphs, and e.g. images.

3. It wouldn't be bad if you could compare an actual state with a desired target state and then attach two different strands to that description. On the one hand, use cases that could be achieved with the target state (which everyone can then supplement or enrich with their own use cases), and on the other hand, refinements/adaptations of the originally presented features. This way, you could better pick up the ideas of others and add one or the other.

[cms_hickss]

For Ideas

It is always helpful, whether you want to upvote or downvote (which we had a couple of versions ago), if you give a use case  (good or bad) for your school. The more a PM knows about how different schools use a tool/functionality a more informed decision can be made.

And maybe you aren't the only one with that use case which means people will comment or "kudos" to indicate they have the same concern.

Bugs/Glitches that Shouldn't be Ideas

When a bug or glitch is submitted as an idea perhaps a PM can go in and move it from an "Idea" (as it really doesn't need to be voted on to be fixed) into the area labeled "Known Issues" with a message that it is being moved. 

[MarkKrukowski]

Good gracious...and OMG

Going through some of the blogs\feature requests and looking to submit ideas, there are a number of items which most end-users would find very  helpful dating back to 2018.  Some of them are similar requests that I am looking for in 2024. Simple and useful ideas, like:

• All tabulated tables columns should have sorting
• Imports should also keep the Category they are in (not being dumped to Imported Assignments
• Anywhere the user is displayed, there needs to be an option to right-click to send an e-mail
• When a item is selected for them Modules Section (for editing), once you are done it should navigate you back to the Modules Section

Why such a BIG disconnect from the Daily User to the PM (Project Manager).  Are the PM' not certified...

I understand there is a whole process to do updates\bug fixes (familiar with the SDLC), but really....ideas\items dating back to 2018

Not to mention, some actions in Canvas is not intuitive or require to many clicks to get a task done.

Vexed,

Mark

[RachelSalmon]

Thank you for acknowledging the obstacles with the theme approach and adjusting. There have been a few things that seem small changes that could be made but watched them get lumped in with a larger set of ideas and then not make the cut with votes. Most recently, requesting that the "Student View" permission no longer be tied to the Add/Edit/Delete Courses permission. It seems like a small adjustment that has a huge impact but it was combined with a number of other permissions ideas and that theme didn't get the votes. 

I look forward to being able to suggest and upvote ideas in the future!

[Mikee]

New features are important, but so is core functionality. 

The sheer volume of issues you have published currently, and the rate at which they are being added shines a very harsh light on your current development and quality assurance practices: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Known-Issues/tkb-p/issues

To highlight that there's a gulf between what's requested, what's understood by the product team, what gets developed, how it's QA'd and what's delivered into the platform I'll use one very stark current issue: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Known-Issues/OPEN-only-the-first-user-to-message-someone-after-th... <- auto-reply only replies ONCE, to ONE MESSAGE.

I'd love to know who's in the decision-making team for "will it be addressed" - can the Chief Academic Officer chair this group so your alignment comes in closer to where we need it? Less New Quizzes, please, and more Catalog redesign. 

[cdoherty]

I have been trying to get Instructure to handle usability bugs, any existing feature that causes data loss or significant failure for the end user due to the workflow (e.g., save button deleting content), for the last 10 years. For the last 10 years, Instructure has made many promises, and just as many failures, to create a process to handle this. Calling everything an idea is done on purpose because that absolves Instructure of the obligation to fix anything. To acknowledge bugs as bugs or usability pain points as something more than feature ideas would obligate them to take on more work. This is an intentional choice that Instructure has made many times. It is not because they are lacking feedback from their customers on the idea process. If Instructure ever makes the commitment to address usability issues in a responsible way, that will be a miracle indeed.

[RachelDoty]

Thank you for sharing this update and for being candid about past challenges in the Ideas & Themes process. The outlined changes feel promising, especially with the increased transparency and tools for tracking the lifecycle of ideas, which have been long-requested features from the community. In past iterations, the feedback process often felt one-sided, and the encouragement to submit ideas for existing issues, such as recurring bugs or problematic workflows, could sometimes feel dismissive rather than solution-focused. It might be helpful for Level 1 support to get guidance on when to recommend submitting an Idea versus escalating a known issue.

The shift towards prioritizing individual ideas instead of broad themes is a welcome change that will hopefully make it easier to see our specific feedback acknowledged and acted upon. I appreciate the commitment to real-time updates and transparency, and I look forward to seeing these changes come to fruition. Thank you for recognizing and addressing these long-standing concerns—I hope this new approach builds the truly collaborative feedback many of us have been seeking.

[holmesm1]

Can you PLEASE give us the ability to individually disable our inbox? Even though I can forward messages to my email, I cannot always reply without an error "undeliverable" message. I need to be able to format text in these replies and I really don't want a second inbox to check (more for adjunct faculty teaching at multiple institutions).

I want my students to learn how to communicate professionally using their email address and sending me emails. I can also retain messages in Outlook even if I leave an institution. I cannot retain messages in Canvas inbox.

This idea has many "kudos" and not been implemented. There is no way to contact someone at Canvas to discuss this with. Our LMS team speaks with a rep who also serves many other districts. that person has zero power to effect change at Instructure. The lack of transparency and customer service insulating the product teams from we who are using the product is infuriating.

[DanBurgess]

Kudos to Instructure for persisting in doing what I think is an extremely difficult undertaking. If you can crack the nut of managing input from an active user community and in the process achieve satisfaction from a majority of users, you'll have done something impressive.  

I think the "Maybe" stage is probably going to be the area that will be trickiest to manage. If a lot of ideas go in there and then eventually go the No path, folks might lose faith in the process. Ideas in that space may need more communication to help folks stay informed and to understand why something may have to be rejected.  

[kangasimon]

Very frustrating process for users indeed. The Canvas process of receiving, voting over and implementing user feedback is so archaic and slow in this age (21st Century). If the choice of LMS platform were not institutional, some of us users would have selected more nimble and innovative alternative platforms that would serve our learners and instructors better, and one that responds faster to user existing and emerging needs. For example, there is a feature users have been asking Canvas to update since 2021! A tool that allows an instructor to organize the speed grader comments by categories e.g. by assignment etc (so that they don't just pile in this long comment library). In spite of multiple comments and votes, nothing has happened. I could go on and on, but I hope my voice of frustration is representative of other silent voices that are too frustrated to even comment.

[holmesm1]

Canvas/Instructure has set up a bureaucratic shield that prevents professors (customers) from being able to speak with the poeple that can implement changes. I can only speak with L1 customer support or my campus/district Canvas administrator. I asked them who my administrator is so that I can vent my frustrations and ask them to please pass along my ideas because this kudos/likes thing is obviously worthless. L1 will not tell me who my administrator is and legally cannot.

What a terrible customer service model. Thankfully I found out who our admin is but still, in order to get the idea to the engineering team at Canvas, I tell them, they tell the rep they meet with once a semester (at most) who is also the rep for many other districts. that person may or may not speak with their boss/team about the idea. Beyond that, I have no idea how many layers of bureaucratic malaise it must go through before someone who can write the code to make the change actually hears about it and even then, there is a minuscule chance they have the bandwidth or desire to write it. 

[ruthfoulkrod]

Thank you for the taking the time to provide your feedback on the proposed updates to Ideas & Themes. We're grateful for all your valuable insights and support.

Our teams are taking the week to carefully review and discuss all the feedback we received. We will be evaluating your suggestions to ensure our final decisions reflect our customers' needs. Your engagement is crucial in helping us create the best experience possible.

More blog posts to come as we finalize this process. Thank you again for all your input!