Just a note... we recently came across an incredibly interesting discovery in Canvas related to sorting student's last names. Call me crazy... but this doesn't seem right...

 

For a list of students that includes the following names:

Joseph Smith-Reynolds

Payton Miller

Sally Smith

William Toller

 

Our SIS (PowerSchool) lists these students in this order:

Payton Miller

Sally Smith

Joseph Smith-Reynolds

William Toller

 

This is the order I would expect given that there is a character right after Smith in Joseph's name and there is no space between the name and the additional character. Basically, *any* character > no character, so the hyphenated name comes second.

 

Canvas lists these students in this order:

Payton Miller

Joseph Smith-Reynolds

Sally Smith

William Toller

 

Which didn't really make sense to me.

 

We opened a support case on this because... well... it doesn't make sense. I was less than enthralled with the comeback (this is a direct quote from the response we received)

 

"Our Product & Engineering team have reviewed this issue and determined it is functioning correctly: The algorithm we use for sort order of names is based on Unicode collation ordering, as described here - http://unicode.org/reports/tr10/. This sorting algorithm method will not be changed, as it covers sort order expectations on a larger basis, for language packs and characters used by the majority of our customers across the globe."

 

If said technician had taken the time to actually read the Unicode page linked, they would know that there are multiple approved ways of sorting within Unicode based on "Variable Weighting". It appears that Instructure has chosen to follow the one that throws off hyphenated names when another student with the shorter name is in that particular class.

 

 

AM I CRAZY HERE? I appreciate the thought, but how difficult is it to put students in their actual alphabetical order?

 

Hope this finds you all well and safe as the holidays approach.

 

smiles,

Jamie