1. Disabled notifications
The default notification setting for Announcements and Conversation Messages is to Notify immediately. However, students can adjust the frequency of notification emails, including turning Notifications off.
We recommend instructing students to leave notifications for these two categories as Notify immediately in their personal settings. You can include in your syllabus that students are responsible for receiving communication by teaching staff.
2. Delays due to high traffic
Canvas can experience delays in sending notifications when there are extremely large message queues, especially during the start of a quarter. For time-sensitive messages, emailing students directly instead of relying solely on Canvas Announcements is what we recommend. Student email addresses can be downloaded through Roster Photos.
3. Emails in Spam or Clutter folders
It is possible for notification emails end up in a student’s spam folder.
4. Course is unpublished
Announcements posted before the Canvas course shell is published do not generate notifications. Notifications do not go out for unpublished courses. If you have already posted the announcement and your course is not yet published, first publish the course (once it's ready to go live to students) and then use the Delay posting feature to trigger another announcement.