The NU Canvas Support Chatbot was built by the Teaching & Learning Technologies team at Northwestern to help you get answers to common Canvas questions quickly. It can search for answers to your questions in Instructure's Canvas guides as well as Northwestern's Canvas Learning Center and Knowledge Base for links to relevant support documentation. It also provides instructors and staff with an immediate resolution to three types of Canvas requests:

creating a prep site so you can prepare materials for a future course,
adding storage space to your Canvas course when you are running low, and
creating and enrolling students in a custom section in a CAESAR-based course.

The chatbot can do these tasks for you directly, eliminating the need to place a request with Northwestern IT and wait for it to be processed.

Note for Teachers and TAs: the Chatbot client does not include its full functionality if you are chatting with it while in Student View. Please make sure you are not in Student View before opening the Canvas Chatbot (there will be a fuschia border around your browser screen when in Student View).

Finding the Chatbot

To talk to the NU Canvas Support Chatbot, go to Canvas in your web browser, click on the Ask icon at the bottom of the main left navigation.

Chatbot location in Canvas navigation

Requesting a Canvas Prep Site

Want to build out a future course in Canvas? Pop over to the chatbot for a prep site. A prep site is an unpublished site on Canvas used to prepare for an upcoming course, try new tools or apps, or to store and modify material from a previous course. Prep sites are not for teaching and cannot be made available to students. Prep site course material can be easily copied into actual course sites.

Once you’ve pulled up the chat window, ask the chatbot for a prep site. After the chatbot understands your request, it will take a moment to confirm that you have a current Teacher, TA, or Support role in Canvas. After its confirmation, it will ask if you would like to add a “course name modifier” to your prep site – this text, if you choose to enter it, will just become part of your course’s name. For instance, you might enter “Spring 2021 Journalism 101” if you were planning to work on creating materials for that future course. You can also proceed with your request without entering a modifier, and then your prep site will just have a plain name. Once you answer this question, the chatbot will process your request and create a prep site.

To request a prep site from the NU Canvas Chatbot, follow these instructions:

Open the NU Canvas Chatbot.
Once the chat window opens, ask the chatbot to create a prep site for you.

3. After the chatbot understands your request, it will take a moment to confirm that you have a current Teacher, TA, or Support role in Canvas. After its confirmation, it will ask if you would like to add a “course name modifier” to your prep site – this text, if you choose to enter it, will just become part of your course’s name. You can also proceed with your request without entering a modifier, and then your prep site will just have a plain name. Once you answer this question, the chatbot will process your request and create a prep site.

Requesting More Storage Space in a Canvas Course

Running low on storage space in your Canvas course? Check in with the chatbot for greater gigabytes.

After you’ve pulled up the chat window, ask the chatbot for more file storage space. Once the chatbot recognizes your request, it will ask for the URL for the course where a file storage increase is needed. Copy the course URL from the top bar of your web browser and paste it into the chat window. The chatbot will then ensure you have an appropriate role in the course to make this request (Teacher, TA, Support, or Designer). Once it has confirmed this, the chatbot will process your request for additional storage space.

You can view the percentage of course file space being used by going to Files in your Canvas course and looking in the bottom left corner of that page. The default file storage amount for each Canvas course at Northwestern is 1 gigabyte (1024 megabytes).

In order to upload all the video and audio files that you would like to your Canvas course while consuming less storage space, Teaching & Learning Technologies recommends the use of Northwestern’s Panopto video storage, creation, and management system. Learn how to use Panopto to store videos and share them with your students in Canvas.

Creating and Enrolling Students in a Custom Section in a CAESAR-Based Course

Are you looking to create custom sections in your CAESAR-controlled course so that you can manage different groups of students within your class with targeted communications or assignments? The chatbot can help! However, before you start, please keep in mind that if students drop the course in CAESAR after being enrolled in a custom section, you will need contact <consultant@northwestern.edu> to request to have them manually removed.

To get started, ensure you have:

Your course site’s URL
A list of NetIDs (up to 15 per request) and their corresponding section name

Steps to Add Students to Sections

Open the Chatbot
Request to add students to custom sections
Choose an option:
- Create a new custom section (provide a section name)
- Add students to an existing section (provide the section’s URL)
Provide your course site URL when prompted (e.g. '...canvas.northwestern.edu/courses/......')
Depending on your selection in Step 3, either enter your custom course section name or provide the section’s URL (e.g., "...canvas.northwestern.edu/courses/654321/sections/....").
Enter NetIDs (separated by commas or spaces)
Repeat as needed: You can add more students or create additional sections

For more details on sections, visit the sections page on the Canvas Learning Center.

Example of a Canvas course site with newly created sections by the Canvas Chabot.