Upcoming Canvas Tier 1 Support Improvements

[traci_moes]

[UPDATE: 2 DECEMBER 2021] Thank you for the great questions expressed so far. We still have a bit more work to do before we share further details, as these features are still in development. We appreciate you taking the time to take an early glance and we'll send out comms to Institution Field Admins as development progresses and we have more concrete details—watch your inboxes. 

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We have some exciting improvements coming to the Tier 1 Support experience, which we anticipate will help provide even better support for our customers. While the implementation of these features is still some time away, we were too excited to wait and wanted to give you a sneak peek of what we are hoping to be included in this rollout. 

Proactive Messages

One of the new features we are excited to include is the ability for our Support Staff to proactively add messages to particular elements and pages within Canvas. Those proactive messages may contain links to guides, release notes, and images, or other useful information that can help users long before they need to submit a Support ticket. Our Support staff will be mainly creating these messages based around larger feature releases.

Pop-up Messages

Canvas Help ChatThe Help Menu

For the help menu, we will be consolidating our Support links to a single non-editable link, “Canvas Support,” rather than having individual links for every contact method. The rest of the help menu can continue to be customized as you do today.

If clicked, this new link will open the Support Center on the right side of the screen.

It will show past interactions with the Support Center including useful guides—as determined by which page the user is on. We will also provide the ability to ask a question to our Virtual Assistant. 

Chat BotChat Virtual Assistant

When clicking “send us a message,” the new experience will open a chat interface allowing you to chat with our Virtual Assistant.

The assistant will be able to help provide the following: answers to common Canvas questions, links to Canvas guides based on the user’s role, links to certain support centers for external tools, and conversational help prompts.

The Virtual Assistant will also be able to provide information from specific articles from your Customer Knowledge Base. 

Contacting Support. If the request is more complex, users will still be able to contact Support via any of the traditional methods: phone, chat, or ticket based on the individual's role.

These three options will appear after responses are given by the Virtual Assistant, as well as at the end of any guides linked in the interface. This will allow Support agents to have pertinent case information as soon as they are connected to a user, which should increase the immediate efficacy of the support experience.

We are so excited about these upcoming new features and the opportunity to improve the overall support experience for our Tier 1 customers. As more information becomes available around product specifics and timelines, we’ll be sure to share that with you to ensure a smooth transition. If you have feedback or questions, please feel free to comment below!

[rake_9]

This both intrigues me and makes me very nervous!  For each of those options, how much control do we have over what our users will be told and where they might be directed?

[venitk]

"One of the new features we are excited to include is the ability to proactively add messages to particular elements and pages within Canvas. Those proactive messages may contain links to guides, release notes, and images, or other useful information that can help users long before they need to submit a Support ticket."

Are these messages that we (ie institutional Canvas admins) program or that Canvas programs? 

[Sylvia_Ami]

I'm looking forward to these improvements. I hope that it will be easier for users to get to the chat option. Currently users have to (1) go to the support page, (2) click on Contact Support, (3) click "Yes, Contact Support," and then (4) click Chat. Getting to chat in one step would be such an improvement compared to the current four steps.

[00900405]

@Sylvia_Ami can your institution not just click on Help button inside Canvas and click on Chat?

We have always boasted of how canvas support was live. You get a live person, never a machine. That is what we pay for.
Now we have to go through a machine to get to a live person. A lot of people do not have good experiences with automated chats or calling help centers where they talk to recordings. This, I am not happy about this.
If we signed a contract for Tier 1 support that, when we signed, went to a live person - will we still receive that level of support or are we forced to the virtual assistant?

[Sylvia_Ami]

Thanks for asking that question @00900405 . We have three colleges in one instance so our help menu has link to help information for each of the three colleges. Then from there, we have a direct link to the Canvas chat form. So as long as users use that link, they're OK. It's just confusing if the user is on a help guide or in the knowledge base and then wants to get to the chat.

[degensp28]

This is a very exciting step, but I have a few questions/concerns.

1. The static images for Canvas Help Chat appear to only go to a bot. Will institutions paying for the live 24-7 support see an additional option for live support in that same place?
2. Proactive Messages calls out the links to guides, release notes, and images.
   1. What populates that?
   2. What about the Vimeo media you've produced?
   3. Can local admins add things?
   4. Can local admins remove things?
   5. Can instructors add thing if it is in their course?
   6. Can instructors remove thing if it is in their course?
   7. If instructors can update these, will those changes be available in the Select Components area of course copy?
   8. Will users have a place to toggle this whole situation on and off?
   9. This will be a nightmare when attempting to make locally relevant video documentation if the answer to g isn't "Yes, and that toggle is available for the Test Student too!"

[amandarosenzwei]

The proactive messages are an exciting addition. I do not know if canvas or admins of canvas control the messages. 

The new help menu seems to be presenting a way that canvas help (chat and phone) is being buried to reach users. I agree that the first stop should be a guide but it seems like we are creating a clicking scaffold treasure hunt. 

[MaskeM]

When will these features become available?

[erinhmcmillan]

Thank you for the great questions expressed so far. We still have a bit more work to do before we share further details, as these features are still in development. We appreciate you taking the time to take an early glance and we'll send out comms to Institution Field Admins as development progresses and we have more concrete details—watch your inboxes.

[jlee16]

Agree with concerns that Tier 1 help will be buried by bots and guides.  We have found phone support to be the most expedient way to resolve an issue - can we assume that our number will remain unchanged, and users can expect to receive direct assistance when calling in?  I have Canvas Support in my contacts list - easy-peasy!

[Chris_Hofer]

My team has recently connected with folks from Impact (formerly EesySoft) that Instructure acquired earlier this year to see a demo of their product.  Some of the things listed above (such as "Proactive Message" and parts of "The Help Menu") seem to be very similar to what Impact already has in place.  Impact also has a back-end analytics tool that looks very useful to understand more of where our students/instructors may be struggling to get the help and resources they need for Canvas.  Will there be analytics for these new updates as well?  It might be nice to have a comparison chart of these updates from Instructure compared to the current features of Impact.

[jsowalsk]

I second @Chris_Hofer's comments.

[PamelaImperato]

Will there be videos for faculty and for students that explain how they may access Help?  This would remove the need for school-based staff to distill this information and create user-friendly instructions for each of the target audiences.  

[JLinskens]

I second some of the concerns regarding a chatbot. Our faculty have come to rely on human interactions in order to get their questions answered in a timely manner. In my opinion, the chatbot could diminish the Tier 1 experience and support clients have come to expect causing undue frustration. 

[buellj]

The in-context guides could be very helpful if they are well done and institutions have the ability to customize and turn off if they are not relevant or cause confusion. This needs to be reviewed with ALL schools well in advance of launch and finalization of design.

However, we are very concerned about the plan to put the chat and phone numbers behind a chatbot. Let's be clear - chatbots SUCK and this is anti-user design is intended solely to add barriers for users trying to contact support like what we see with companies with horrible/non-existent customer service like Comcast. Don't do it. We pay a significant amount of our yearly fee for "support" so this would not be positively received.

Students and faculty calling Canvas Support for how-to questions is good feedback data for Instructure; if tons of people call about a particular issue then that's data that the design of the feature is not intuitive and the guides are hard to find. The response should be to fix those features, improve the guides and improve the indexing for guides, not doubling down on bad design and shutting off customer access to ask questions.

[thomas_mckenna]

Thank you for the recent email regarding the projected changed to Tier 1 support.  

As a designated field admin for my organisation, I would like to know if there will be an opportunity to engage with reviewing the proposed changes in a test environment before being fully released.  This would allow for feedback, and from my viewpoint to assist with updating/improving our existing KB's.  Additionally, to create and adjust any signposting needed for our students and tutors using Canvas.  My thought process here is leaning towards the content of guidance for our students and tutors on using the Chatbot.  For example, by asking a 'How to...' question, instead of meandering...  I find that happens a lot when reviewing the support tickets from our end users,  I am also guilty of it too.

Thus, if there can be an opportunity to test out the Chatbot in advance, I'm of the view it would be extremely helpful.

Ps, what reporting features will be available on the use of the Chatbot?

[jsowalsk]

Second @thomas_mckenna 

[kimmeyd]

Dear Canvas,

I think the chat virtual assistant is a very poor idea.  We pay a premium for customer support and every company that has a virtual assistant is infuriating to deal with.  With the ever emerging market of LMS systems the customer support was the reason for utilizing Canvas within our district.  This type of change will surely reduce this one aspect that made Instructure stand out, without customer support moving to a smaller more reactive LMS may be a real possibility.

Please reconsider this move as you are putting profits over customers.  When companies do this they lose what made them marketable in the first place and they become antiquated useless tools that are no longer impactful for our students use.

[fisherr4]

As one of my district's Canvas support admins, I NEVER want to interact with a Chatbot.  I echo the others concerns that we pay money to get support from humans, not from inefficient Chatbots that inevitably waste my time jumping through hoops.  

[Nancy_Webb_CCSF]

Hi, I am working on using the 10 categories for the KB entries but have a couple of questions.  The email with the categories is "noreply," so who can I contact to answer my questions?  

Thanks!