Canvas Updates: Inbox Improvements and Scheduling Page Publishing

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Canvas is updating two different areas across the coming months. On October 15, you’ll also be able to specify dates and times to publish pages. And later this year, you’ll see some minor changes to the Canvas inbox.

Schedule Page Publish Dates/Times

Canvas is also adding a “publish at” setting for pages. When you use this setting, students will not be able to see publish-delayed pages until the set publish date and time.

To set a date/time, go to a Canvas page. Below the textbox is an “options” heading where you can choose who can edit the page (an existing feature) and also choose a “publish at” date/time (the new feature!).

*The “Publish At” feature for pages in the Options section below the page copy.*

Once the date is set, the page saved, and you return to either the pages or modules page in Canvas, you’ll see a small red calendar icon to the right of the page name to indicate it’s scheduled. This icon appears in the place where you’d normally see the slashed circle for unpublished items or green check for published items. And clicking this calendar icon allows you to quickly change the scheduled date/time or entirely publish or unpublish the page. Once the page has been auto-published at the date/time, the calendar icon will change to the standard green check mark.

Canvas Inbox

Canvas has delayed this Inbox update as they work to fix a couple of issues that came up in testing. We’ll update this post with more information about the release as we learn more!

Canvas describes the changes for the inbox as providing “improved functionality for all users” – adjusting the interface to improve accessibility and users’ experiences.

While functionality is the same, the layout is different in a couple places.

The toolbar at the top of your inbox has been resized and slightly reorganized.

The search field has been moved to the center of the toolbar and now has the label text of “Insert or Select Names.” Clicking into that field now gives you the drop-down where you can select users through the “Courses” or “Students” options. But you can also type directly into that field to search for a particular person.

*The new Canvas Inbox toolbar arrangement with the search bar in the middle*

The “compose message” window has been tweaked visually.

The “send an individual message to each recipient” checkbox has been moved to be directly below the course selection drop-down. And the labeling for both the “to” and “subject” fields has been updated!