Canvas operates on a three-week release cycle through which features are added or updated. Courseware Support posts highlights from Canvas’s production release notes, a link to these notes, and other relevant content to the Canvas at Penn a few days before the production release, which usually occurs on Saturdays. Please contact Courseware Support at canvas@pobox.upenn.edu if you have any questions about an upcoming production release.
3/30/19 Production Release Highlights
- Content Link Error Notification: The Notifications page includes a new alert for instructors to be notified about broken links in a course. If instructors want to be notified of broken links in their course, instructors can visit their Notification Preferences page and select the Content Link Error notification. Instructors are notified with both the location and content of the link error. This notification is triggered in the following conditions: the link cannot be accessed by students because of a permission error, the link is broken, or the link is unpublished.
- SMS Message Content: Cellular (SMS) Notifications have been shortened to distribute one message about the related content. Additionally, content no longer includes direct URLs to access the content within the course. Users who prefer accessing the content directly should consider accessing the Canvas apps and enabling push notifications. Depending on the notification type, text messages include the following minimized content:
- Submission Graded: assignment name
- Assignment Created: course name and due date (if the assignment includes multiple due dates)
- New Discussion Entry: discussion topic and user name who posted the discussion reply
- New Announcement: announcement title
- Conversation Message: user name who sent the message
- Assignment Due Date Changed: assignment name and new due date
- Beta Label Removals: The beta label has been removed from the following feature options at the account and course levels: ePub Exporting (Course), New Gradebook (Course), Enable Dashboard Images for Courses (Course), MasteryPaths (Course), Anonymous Grading (Course), Moderated Grading (Course), Quiz Log Auditing (Course). No existing functionality has been affected.
- Group Membership Edit Message Clarification: The group membership edit message has been reworded for functionality clarity. This commit makes the warning message stronger about data loss that may occur in SpeedGrader when editing group memberships for existing group submissions.
- Concluded Course User Enrollments: In the Courses page, the Add People button only displays for active courses.
- Student Replies and Concluded Courses: When an instructor replies to a student in a concluded course, the student is included in the message reply.
- Course Nickname Length on Dashboards: Course nicknames are limited to a maximum of 59 characters.
- Discussion State Changes and Submission Time: Discussion grading state changes do not affect discussion student submission times.
- Anonymous Grading and Instructor Notifications: Anonymous Grading assignments that are still muted do not include student names in instructor notifications about submission comments, student submitting on time, and students who re-submitted an assignment.
- Media Recorder Browser Access Error: If media access is blocked in a browser, Canvas displays a message that webcam and microphone access are required to use the media recorder.
- Concluded Course Rubric Access: Instructors can view and add rubrics from concluded courses.
- Criterion Decimal Scores in Rubrics: Rubric total scores are rounded to four decimal places.
- Criterion Point Edits in Rubrics: Edited point values display the edited value in the rubric.
- Save Comment Button and Peer Review Rubrics: Peer Review rubrics do not display the Save Comment button after the peer review rubric has been saved.
- Draft Comments and Submission Downloads: The Submission Download link includes a download attribute to allow draft comments to be saved in SpeedGrader.
- Peer Review Rubrics: Peer Review Rubric scores are reset for remaining evaluators in SpeedGrader.
- Submission Downloads and Concluded Courses: Submission comments can be downloaded in concluded courses.
For a complete production release update, please see:
Canvas Production Release Notes: March 30, 2019
March 9, 2019 Canvas Production Release Screencast
Last Updated: 20 Oct 2021