Overview

Canvas Announcements are a great way to connect with students and share important information. Students can access announcements directly within the course site (in the Announcements Index or recent announcements at the top of the home page), within the Canvas Student App, or by email. All formatting and content is retained when viewing the announcement within the course site or within the app but some formatting and content, such as images or embedded video, does not appear in the email message/notification. Below, you will find some best practices for creating announcements and formatting recommendations.

General Best Practices

• If your announcement includes an embedded image or video, include a sentence that students must view the announcement within a browser or the Canvas app to see all content.
• Try to keep your announcements relatively short and avoid large blocks of text.
• Create and send announcements through a browser (as opposed to the Canvas Teacher app) if text formatting is important, such as using multiple paragraphs, bolding, embedded images, etc.
• If utilizing headers to break up content, we recommend bolding the header so text stands out in email notifications.

What Content/Formatting is Not Included in Email Notifications?

• Embedded images
• Embedded videos
• Headers
  • In the email notification, the text comes through as regular paragraph text; although it is readable, it does not stand out like a header normally would.
• Paragraphs
  • If using the Teacher App: Extra space does not appear between paragraphs and can make content difficult to read.
  • If using a browser: Paragraphs come through correctly with extra space between paragraphs.
• Font color changes
  • In the email notification, all text is the same color except for hyperlinks (which are also underlined).
• Underlined text
  
  • No underlining appears in email notifications; however, underlined text (other than hyperlinks) should generally be avoided following accessibility best practices.