Bulk Publish

One engineer and I cut publishing a 120-item course from 120 clicks to 2, in a hackathon week.

Product: Canvas LMS
Role: Senior Product Designer
Team: 1 engineer
Timeline: Hackathon week
Year: 2024

Canvas Modules page showing the bulk publish menu.

Summary

Problem: Instructors could publish course items only one at a time. A semester course has 80 to 120.
Solution: Bulk publish actions for a whole course or module, with progress and error states.
Result: 120 clicks to 2. Released soon after.

The problem

Every module and item had its own publish button. That was the only way.

I picked it for the hackathon as a small change with a large usability gain.

It is quite a long list of assignments that I do not all want to be published when I publish the course.

A module with the publish button on each item highlighted. — One publish button per item was the only way.

I timed about four colleagues at 0.75 to 1 second per click, so a 120-item course takes 90 to 120 seconds before scrolling.

Recording of items being published one click at a time. — Publishing one item at a time.

A menu, not multi-select

The usual pattern is a checkbox on every item plus an action menu. I dropped it, because instructors would still click every item and publish would sit where they didn't expect it. The engineer added that changing the list items was a much larger scope.

Three explorations of multi-select checkboxes with a bulk action menu. — The multi-select exploration.

Instead, three actions work on the whole course or on one module.

Publish all modules and items publishes everything.
Publish all modules publishes the modules only, so students see the course outline before the assignments.
Unpublish all unpublishes everything.

Modules page with the Publish All menu at course level. — The menu at course level and on a single module.

Modules page with the publish menu on a single module. — The menu at course level and on a single module.

Recording of a module published with one menu action. — Publishing a module and its items in one action.

Designing for a background job

Publishing a large course runs in the background, so the design has a progress dialog and a completion alert.

Progress dialog shown while items are being published. — Progress while the job runs, and the alert when it finishes.

Modules page after publishing, with a completion alert. — Progress while the job runs, and the alert when it finishes.

With several editors in one course, I mapped what happens when:

the browser tab is closed while the job is running;
another editor opens the Modules page during the job, or already had it open;
one editor cancels the job while another is watching its progress;
two editors start the job at once;
an item's content cannot be changed.

Annotated screens covering error states and concurrent editors. — Error states and concurrent-editor cases.

Outcome

Clicks, 98% fewer: 120 to 2
Seconds, 95% less time: 120 to 5

Counted for: publishing every item in a 120-item course. The 120-second baseline is estimated from click time. The 5 seconds covers the two clicks, and the job then runs in the background.
Not covered: a hand-picked set of items. Those are still published one at a time.
Delivery: product leadership released it quickly, as high impact for little effort.
Not measured: usage. I would compare bulk actions against single-item publishing.

Great improvement! Love it. Sometimes you want to bring in content from somewhere else, but might not want the whole module published.