Canvas - Account Level Roles Description

This articles describes the roles and permissions available at the Account Level in the University of Wisconsin System (except for UW Madison) instance of Canvas.

Account Level Roles in Canvas

Account level roles work most closely like cascading roles in D2L. Roles with similar names and functions might appear at both the account and course level. Account level roles grant permissions to perform tasks within the sub-account where they are applied, and within any sub-account or course below the sub-account where the role is applied.

The following roles are available in the Instructional instance of Canvas. They can be deployed to the Training and Development and Continuing Education instances upon request.

Role Name Role Description
Instructional Designer This role is designed for campus or departmental designers who are involved in course development. Instructional designers have no access to student information, interactions, or grades.
Librarian - E-Reserves This role can add or copy content to courses but cannot interact with students or coursework information.
Librarian - Research This role is designed for users that need to add content to a course, interact with the students in the course, but should not access student grade information.
Outcome Manager This role can import and create rubrics and outcomes in schools/colleges, departments and at the course level. This role is likely to be used by program managers or department associates to add consistent outcomes into courses or sub-accounts in Canvas.
Reporting Admin People with this role can observe activity in courses with the needs of course QA, professional development, course analysis and unit administration in-mind. This role is similar to the Support View role in that it can view course and user reports but has additional access to grade and discussion information.
Search Only Admin People with this role are able to search for courses and people. They have read-only access to the Settings area and the People tool. 
Support Admin People with this role will have the ability to support institutional admins or lead support teams in managing Canvas courses and providing instructor support. The role is similar to an Instructional Designer in ability, but Support Admins can change additional course settings, publish announcements and manage observers.
Support View People with this role have access to reporting information to aid in first line troubleshooting as well as auditing of information related to student progress and course content. Someone with this role might support students at a Help Desk or need to review a student's progress in a course for advising reasons.
Reports Only People with this role only have access to reporting information. The Reports Only role is intended solely for accessing reporting information and nothing else. The role has very minimal access to courses.
Course Template Admin People with this role can browse sub accounts and change subaccount and template settings within certain limits. When combined with another Account role such as Instructional Designer, this bolt-on role can extend the abilities of the more capable role.

Instructional Designer:

This role is designed for campus or departmental designers who are involved in course development. Instructional designers have no access to student information, interactions, or grades.

Instructional Designers can:

  • Manage Blueprint Courses
  • Manage Courses
  • View Statistics
  • View the list of Courses
  • Undelete courses
  • View course change logs
  • Manage the course calendar
  • Create and edit rubrics
  • Create student collaborations
  • Import learning outcomes
  • Manage assignments and quizzes
  • Manage course files
  • Manage pages
  • Manage groups
  • Manage alerts
  • Manage all other course content
  • Manage learning outcomes
  • Read SIS data
  • View and link to question banks
  • View announcements
  • View course content
  • View discussions
  • View the answer matrix in Quiz Submission logs
  • View Usage reports for the course

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Librarian - E-Reserves:

This role can add or copy content to courses but cannot interact with students or coursework information.

The E-Reserves Librarian can:

  • View list of courses
  • Manage assignments
  • Manage course files
  • Manage pages
  • Manage other course content
  • View announcement
  • View course content

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Librarian - Research:

This role is designed for users that need to add content to a course, interact with the students in the course, but should not access student grade information.

This role can:

  • View list of courses
  • add/edit/delete events on course calendar
  • create and edit rubrics
  • create student collaborations
  • Manage assignments
  • Manage course files
  • Manage pages
  • manage groups
  • Manage other course content
  • post to discussions
  • See other users email address
  • See list of users
  • send messages to course members
  • send messages to entire class
  • View announcement
  • View course content
  • view discussions
  • view group pages of all student groups

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Outcome Manager:

This role can import and create rubrics and outcomes in schools/colleges, departments and at the course level. This role is likely to be used by program managers or department associates to add consistent outcomes into courses or sub-accounts in Canvas.

  • Import learning outcomes
  • Create and edit assessing rubrics
  • Manage learning outcomes

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Reporting Admin:

People with this role can observe activity in courses with the needs of course QA, professional development, course analysis and unit administration in-mind. This role is similar to the Support View role in that it can view course and user reports but has additional access to grade and discussion information.

  • View statistics
  • View the list of courses
  • View course change logs
  • View grade change logs
  • Read SIS data
  • See the list of users
  • View all grades
  • View analytics pages
  • View announcements
  • View course content
  • View discussions
  • view usage reports for the course

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Search-Only Admin:

People with this role are able to search for courses and people. They have read-only access to the Settings area and the People tool. Search Only Admins will have access to Canvas to search for courses and users to verify enrollment and course availability without exposing protected or restricted information.

  • Course - view list
  • SIS Data - read
  • Users - view list
  • Users - view login IDs
  • Users - view the primary email address

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Support Admin:

People with this role will have the ability to support institutional admins or lead support teams in managing Canvas courses and providing instructor support. The role is similar to an Instructional Designer in ability, but Support Admins can change additional course settings, publish announcements and manage observers.

  • Manage Blueprint Courses
  • Manage courses (add, manage / update, conclude, publish, reset, but not delete)
  • Manage Global Announcements
  • Manage storage quotas
  • View statistics
  • View the list of courses
  • Un-delete courses
  • View course change logs
  • View grade change logs
  • Manage events on the course calendar
  • Add/remove other teachers, course designers or TAs to the course
  • Change course state
  • Create and edit assessing rubrics
  • Create student collaborations
  • Edit grades
  • Import learning outcomes
  • Manage assignments and quizzes
  • Manage course files
  • Manage pages
  • Manage groups
  • Manage alerts
  • Manage all other course content
  • Manage learning outcomes
  • Moderate grades
  • Moderate discussions
  • Post to discussions
  • Read SIS data
  • See the list of users
  • Send messages to individual course members
  • Send messages to the entire class
  • View all grades
  • View all student submissions and make Comments on them
  • View analytics pages
  • View and link to question banks
  • View announcements
  • View course content
  • View discussions
  • View the answer matrix in Quiz submission logs
  • View the group pages of all student groups
  • View usage reports for the course

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Support View:

People with this role have access to reporting information to aid in first line troubleshooting as well as auditing of information related to student progress and course content. Someone with this role might support students at a Help Desk or need to review a student's progress in a course for advising reasons.

  • View statistics
  • View the list of courses
  • View course change logs
  • Read SIS data
  • See the list of users
  • View analytics pages
  • View announcements
  • View course content
  • View the group pages of all student groups
  • View usage reports for the course

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Reports Only:

People with this role only have access to reporting information. The Reports Only role is intended solely for accessing reporting information and nothing else. The role has very minimal access to courses.

  • View statistics
    • View account statistics
    • Generate login/logout activity
  • View course usage reports
    • View and configure usage reports
    • View Access reports and Student Interaction reports
    • View last and total activity information for a user
  • View analytics pages
    • View account analytics
    • View course analytics
    • View student analytics
  • View announcements
    • View the Announcements link in Course Navigation
    • View course Announcements

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Course Template Admin:

People with this role can browse sub accounts and change subaccount and template settings within certain limits. When combined with another Account role such as Instructional Designer, this bolt-on role can extend the abilities of the more capable role.

  • Account-level settings - manage
  • Manage Course Templates
    • Create
    • Edit 
    • Delete

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Keywordscanvas account level roles permissions adminDoc ID90083
OwnerBenjamin G.GroupUWSA DLE
Created2019-02-28 16:29:23Updated2024-02-26 11:26:07
SitesUW Green Bay, UW Parkside, UW Stout, UW System Administration DLE, UW-Milwaukee Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning
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