Known Issues in Canvas

Browser Extensions and Third-Party Tools

There have been several issues in recent months that were remedied by turning off all browser extensions and by checking if any Third Party tools were running.

Regardless of browser, please turn off any extensions you may be using if you are having difficulties accessing Canvas or Canvas-integrated tools.

No Email Notifications for Courses in Future Terms, Just Push Notifications

Users do not receive email notifications for actions taken in courses in future terms. For example, if you are a student in a course that is set up in Canvas for Fall 2022, and it is currently Summer 2022, you will not receive email notifications if your instructor takes an action (e.g., creates an assignment). This issue occurs even for courses that are currently active but are technically associated with a future term (e.g., a Fall 2022 course that actually starts in Summer 2022). Users do receive push notifications for these type of actions, however. To learn more about push notifications, please see “Set Push Notifications” on this page (instructor information and student information).

Sometimes, the announcements tab in the course navigation menu may intermittently stay hidden after the first announcement is added to the course rather than becoming visible as expected.

Updating the course settings in any way should cause the Announcements tab to become visible.

Grading and Quizzes

Timeout Issues in SpeedGrader

SpeedGrader has a session timeout of 10 hours. Canvas will display a session expiration warning at 9 hours 50 minutes, followed by a 5-minute and 1-minute warning until the 10-hour limit has been reached.

You can restart a DocViewer session at any time by refreshing the submission page.

Grading History Not Displaying All Grade Changes

The Canvas grading history for a student’s assignment grade only shows the two most recent grade changes in the last 24-hour period. Any additional changes made in this period are not saved.

No Quiz Statistics for Classic Quizzes with More than 100 Questions or 1,000 Attempts

Quiz statistics aren’t available for Classic Quizzes with more than 100 questions or 1,000 attempts (i.e., more than 1,000 quiz submissions from students for a single quiz). When you click on the Quiz Statistics link for a quiz that exceeds these maximum values for questions or attempts, the following message appears:

Please consult the “Canvas Quiz Item Analysis” document for more information on the benefits and limitations of Canvas quiz statistics.

Item analysis may not generate results within specific quizzes. Here are a few limitations to consider within analysis reports.

• Currently, analysis is designed to work with quizzes that deliver the same questions to all students. Therefore, if you generate the item analysis CSV for quizzes that pull from a question group, the CSV will generate a line representing each version of the quiz.
• The Quiz Item Analysis report currently only supports Multiple Choice and True/False quiz questions.
• If a quiz allows multiple attempts, the calculations will only consider the student’s first attempt (to rule out practice effects).
• Questions that are left blank or not answered count as wrong when determining the total score for the exam, but they are excluded from question-level calculations.
• Statistics only include data for students who attempted to take the quiz.

As a workaround, you can view quiz statistics by downloading the CSV files in the Student Analysis and Item Analysis links. You can then upload the file to Excel, Google Sheets, or another spreadsheet and view the data in a much more user-friendly format.

Gradebook-Export Name-Sorting Issue

When you export the Canvas gradebook, sort the export by any column other than the “Student” column (for example: the “Final Score” column), and the re-sort the export by the “Student” column, the second sort re-orders the rows alphabetically by students’ first names instead of by their last names. When a gradebook is exported, the file is sorted alphabetically by last name, so a re-sort of the “Student” column after another column has been sorted does not restore the file to the original sorting order. Our vendor is currently working on a solution for this issue. An update will be posted to this “Known Issues” entry when a solution has been implemented.

Post Final Grades for Muted Moderated Assignments before Unmuting

If a moderated assignment has been unmuted before a moderator posts final grades for the assignment, Canvas generates a notification that the assignment has been unmuted, but the grades and feedback on the assignment are still unavailable to students because the final grades have not be posted. For this reason, it is recommended that final grades for muted moderated assignments be posted before they are unmuted so that the notifications students receive about the assignment being unmuted will accurately reflect the availability of the assignment’s grades and feedback.

“Export Failure” for Duplicate File Names

When a Canvas site contains files with the same name, an “export failure” occurs for course content exports. To fix this issue, a Teacher, TA, or Designer will need to delete duplicate files, or, for different files with the same name, they will need to rename all files except one.

Downloading .csv Files From Canvas

Safari users will need to change a privacy setting in their web browser to download a .csv file from Canvas. If the setting is not changed, the default format, after downloading, will be .txt.

To correct this, in Safari’s Preferences:

• Choose Privacy
• Website tracking
• Uncheck “Prevent cross-site tracking”