Navigating your Canvas Contact Settings

Learn how to customize your notifications from Canvas. You can add ways to receive notifications (such as additional email addresses or push notifications via the Canvas Teacher app), customize your notifications, and share your contact information with your students.

Description

The Canvas Contacts area (found within your Canvas account profile) is a place where you can customize how you would like to be notified of updates within Canvas. This information is not visible to anyone but you and is not a way to share your contact information with students.  

In the Ohio University instance of Canvas, users will see the message “No registered services, you can add some on the settings page.” on the Contact area of their profile. This refers to third-party integrations for Canvas that would allow you to receive notifications to Google or Slack. These integrations are not installed at OHIO University.  

In Canvas, there are other places to customize your notification settings and share your contact information with students. The article below will outline those options.  

Environment

Canvas in your web browser

Solution 

Adding Ways to Receive Notifications

Canvas allows you to add different delivery channels to receive notifications about your courses and activities. You can add additional email addresses and enable push notifications via the Canvas Teacher app on your mobile device. Here are the steps to add contact methods in Canvas: 

1. Log in to canvas.ohio.edu  
2. Select Account in the global navigation menu on the left side of your screen
3. Select Settings in the account menu 
4. Select the + Email Address or + Contact Method buttons to add a new email address for notifications 
   • Note: You will need to verify additional email addresses to receive notifications 
5. To enable push notifications, download and install the Canvas Teacher app on your iOS or Android device and log in with your OHIO credentials. You will need to allow the app to send you notifications when prompted. 

Outcome: You should now be able to add delivery channels in Canvas to stay updated about your courses and activities. 

Customizing your Notifications

You can customize the types of notifications, frequency, and delivery channels in which you receive notifications about your Canvas course.  Here are the steps to customize your notifications in Canvas: 

1. Log in to canvas.ohio.edu  
2. Select Account in the global navigation menu on the left side of your screen
3. Select Notifications in the account menu  
4. You will see a list of notification types and delivery channels based on your contact settings. The notification types are grouped by course activities, discussions, conversations, scheduling, groups, conferences, and alerts. The delivery channels are based on the delivery channels you have enabled. 
5. To change the frequency of notifications for each type and channel, select the icons that represent different levels of notification preferences: notify immediately, daily summary, weekly summary, or notifications off.
6. Your changes will be saved automatically. You can adjust your notification preferences at any time.
7. You can customize notifications per course by navigating to a course under the Settings for field and adding your preferences.
   • Note: Account-level notifications apply to all courses. Notifications for individual courses can be changed within each course and will override the account-level notifications.

Outcome: You should now be able to receive notifications from Canvas based on your preferences.   

Sharing your Contact Information with Students

If you want to share your contact information with students, such as your email address, phone number, or office hours, you can do so by creating a Canvas page in your course and publishing it. Here are the steps to follow: 

1. Log in to canvas.ohio.edu  
2. Navigate to the course where you want to create the page 
3. Select Pages in the course navigation menu 
4. Select View All Pages 
5. Select +Page 
6. Give your page a title, such as "Contact Information" or "Instructor Details" 
7. In the rich content editor, type or paste your contact information 
8. When you are done editing your page, select the Save & Publish button in the bottom right corner 
9. Your page will now be visible in the Pages index. You can link to your page from other places in your course, such as the syllabus, announcements, or modules.

Outcome: You should now be able to share your contact information with students.  

Get Help from Canvas

• Live chat with Canvas support (Faculty) 
• Get 24-hours/7-days a week Canvas support  
  • Dial the Canvas Support Hotline number located under "Get Help" in the Canvas Global Navigation Menu 
  • Contact OIT at 740-593-1222 for questions related to logging in, test courses/manually created courses, or third-party tools (Panopto, VoiceThread, Inclusive Access, etc.) 

Get Help from OIT

• Use the Canvas Learning Management System (LMS) ticket form to submit a help ticket 
• Visit the Technology Resources and Training page for available training 

Additional Resources 

• Canvas Basics Guide 
• Canvas Instructor Guide 
• Canvas Video Guide 
• Mobile Guides 
• Canvas Course Accessibility Checklist
• Canvas LMS Implementation updates
• Canvas Experts Corner Blog