Notifications FAQ

Q. Can you specify to whom notifications are sent?

A. Yes, you can partition enrolled students into Sections and specify which notifications should go to which section.

Note: announcement notifications are sent to all staff regardless of sections, i.e. staff get sent notifications for all announcements, even if the announcement is sent only to a section of which they are not a member (unless the individual has deactivated the receipt of announcements via their Account > Notifications).

(See next question for possible workarounds for staff who may be sensitive to unwanted emails)

Q. How can you avoid staff being sent announcements that are intended for students only?

A. Announcements generate notifications for all those with Course Administrator and Teacher roles, as well as for their intended Student audience. So, if you want to have staff enrolled on your course, and yet not be notified whenever a new announcement is posted, options include:

Enrol staff with the Teacher, Course Administrator, Grader, TA Editor or TA role and explain to them how to control which notifications they receive
Where a course has many staff enrolled and/or staff who may be sensitive to unwanted emails, an alternative is to use the Tutor Observer or Observer role but not link them to any students. Then create a student-only Section to which all students on the course are assigned. When creating an announcement, limit it to students by choosing your student-only section in the Post to field. Announcements sent to the whole course will still be received by the Tutor Observer but announcements sent only to the student-specific section will not be visible to the Tutor Observer and they will therefore not receive the corresponding notifications.

Limitations of the Tutor Observer role to be aware of:

they will not see announcements sent to student-only sections
they will still receive announcements sent to All Sections
they will be unable to see the content of any Quizzes in a course.

Q. Can an administrator bypass the automatic notifications sent by Canvas?

A. Every user (staff and students) needs to control what notifications they receive (and via which communication channel) in their Account > Notifications preferences.

Q. Why am I receiving duplicate Canvas messages to my various email addresses?

A. Sometimes University systems may add an additional email address for you (e.g. college email, dept email, external email). If you start receiving repeated notifications to your multiple email addresses, please go into Account > Notifications and change your notification preferences for each of your email addresses.

Q. Can users set granular notifications per course in Canvas?

A. Yes, within a course, on the Home Page, a user can manage course-level notifications by clicking View Course Notifications. Global notification preferences are set in Account > Notifications. See our guidance page on managing notifications at both the account and course levels.

At the account level, there will be a dropdown box where you can opt to change notification settings for a particular course, without having to access the course itself:

Q. Students can receive automatic notifications from Canvas for various events, e.g. the due date of an assignment has changed. Is it possible to send customised emails to students within a course?

A. Yes, there is an email tool (called Inbox) which can be used to send messages which are called Conversations. You can compose and send messages to individuals or ‘sections’, which they will receive in their normal email inbox – that is, the email address associated with their Canvas account. This email address is visible to the individual under Account > Settings.

Note: Notification preferences can be set per tool (e.g. Announcements, Conversations) by every user in their account profile under Notifications. It is worth warning your students not to turn notifications off, since they would risk missing important information.

Q. As a teacher or course administrator, why did I not receive some Inbox messages sent by my colleague?

A. Firstly, the sender needs to be sure to include all necessary groups or individuals when they compose and send the message (just like with regular email). Secondly, check your Notification preferences (under Account) to ensure that you have not switched off notifications from the Inbox tool (called Conversations).

More information: How to use the Inbox tool Links to an external site.

Q. Should course administrators use Canvas messaging or MS Office to send messages to groups of students? Groups might already have been set up in MS Office, and now it will be double the amount of work to set up similar groups in Canvas.

A. After having set up your courses with enrolled students in Canvas, you can create ‘sections’ which can be used for various teaching purposes, not only emailing (e.g. different announcements, assignments and quizzes for different sections). This will obviate the need to set up and use other mailing list options (of any sort).

Q. Can I filter notifications by importance, similar to Outlook?

A. The notifications layout is grouped by type of tool, e.g. announcements, assignments, discussion etc. It is not possible for notifications to be filtered or sorted by importance. Only the frequency at which notifications are received can be adjusted.