Wiki Page, Canvas Admin Overview: [MODULE 1] Accounts and Sub-Accounts

Wiki Page
2014-04-03T08:37:00-06:00

Accounts and Sub-Accounts

In Canvas, the term Account refers to an organizational unit - such as your school (or set of schools), organization or company. Every instance of Canvas will have only one top-level or root Account. However, you can create as many sub-accounts as necessary to manage departments, courses and users.

Considerations for Your Account Structure

Every organization or institution structures their sub-accounts uniquely. As you plan on organizing your sub-accounts within your Canvas instance, consider the following variables.

1. System Organization
How do you want to organize your users, courses and data? Many clients structure their sub-accounts so it mirrors their organizational or/and SIS account structure. You can build a seamless integration between your SIS and Canvas integration. Look at SIS and decide if you want to structure your sub-accounts the same way or create a new system.

2. Roles and Permissions
What roles and permissions do you want to set at the sub-account levels? Are there program directors, deans, department chairs, school principals, etc. who you want to have admin access to certain parts of Canvas but not the whole system? Do you have a principle at a middle school who needs access to his students and courses at his school? Do you have a college dean who wants to evaluate the course design and delivery in her department?

3. Reports and analytics
Extensive reports and analytics can be pulled and viewed at each sub-account level. How do you want to track this data? How would you or your organization benefit from seeing analytics at a sub-account level?

4. Shared resources
You can establish specific sets of outcomes, rubric templates, grading schemes, and question banks at each sub-account level. Would the English department benefit from accessing outcome-based rubric templates? Would the high school benefit from having a list of course evaluation questions in a sub-account question bank?

Sample Sub-Account Structures

When it comes to structuring your sub-accounts, there are no right or wrong ways. It simply has to align with your organization and culture. We've seen clients structure sub-accounts multiple ways. Below are a few examples.

Public School Systems with multiple campuses

K12 School

Corporate Organization

University or College

Other

View this video with captions.

Functions of Accounts and Sub-Accounts

Keep the following factors in mind when working with accounts and sub-accounts:

There is one root account, but you can create infinite number of sub-accounts.

You can have multiple sub-accounts and multiple tiers (sub-sub account, etc.).

The nature of account hierarchy settings and permissions flow downward, but not up.

Courses can only reside under one sub-account, but can be moved from one sub-account to another (from the course settings).

Sub-accounts can be created via the user interface or via SIS import.

With the exception of Terms, SIS Imports, Authentication and a few account settings, most settings and items can be modified or, in the case of roles & permissions, overridden in a sub-account.

By default, all Canvas instances come with a “Manually Created Courses” sub-account.

The following tutorials provide additional details on accounts and sub-accounts:

What are accounts and sub-accounts?

How do I create a sub-account?

How do I delete a sub-account?

How do I edit the name of a sub-account?

How do I hide a sub-account?

How do I view a sub-account?

What can I use sub-accounts for?