Wiki Page, Canvas Admin Overview: [MODULE 1] The 3 Canvas Environments

Wiki Page
2014-04-03T08:37:01-06:00

The 3 Canvas Environments

As an administrator of your organization's Canvas account, you have access to three different environments: production, test, and beta. The section below will detail each of these environments so you can use them, effectively.

Your Production Environment

Your production instance is your live instance of what you will use. This is the environment that students see and from which your courses will be administered live.

To log into your production environment, type [organization name].instructure.com into the URL field.

Want to stay up-to-date with Canvas changes?
Subscribe to the production and beta Release Notes

Your Test Environment

The test environment is a mirror instance of your production environment. You can test and troubleshoot without messing up your live production environment. Add users, change the CSS, and/or troubleshoot issues without ruining the experience for your users.

Things you should know about the test environment:

It resets every week.

Students and teachers cannot access test environment.

Notifications are turned off.

To log into your test environment, type in [organization name].test.instructure.com into the URL field.

Your Beta Environment

Beta environments are also copies of your production environment. Beta environment allows you to explore new features before they reach production, such as upcoming Canvas tools and features, bug fixes, etc. The new features will be in beta seven days prior to the release date into production environment.

Things you should know about the beta environment:

It resets every three weeks.

Students cannot access beta environment, but teachers can!

Notifications are turned off.

To log into your beta environment, type in [organization name].beta.instructure.com into the URL field.

The following tutorials cover test and beta environments in more detail:

How do I explore beta features in Canvas?

How do I test changes in Canvas?