<p>The beta environment allows you to explore new features before they reach production. The beta environment is overwritten with data from the production environment every Sunday. Any work or content you add to your beta environment will be overwritten every week.</p> <p>If you want to keep up on the latest beta features in Canvas, visit the <a href="https://community.canvaslms.com/community/answers/releases" target="_blank">Release Notes</a> page in the Canvas Community.</p> <p>The beta environment is separate from the test environment, which is overwritten with data from the production environment every three weeks and allows you to test using your real data without ruining the experience for your users. Learn more about the <a href="https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-1384" target="_blank">different Canvas environments</a>.  </p> <p>Notes about the Beta Environment:</p> <ul><li>All users can access the Canvas beta environment, but students cannot access course content beyond the Course Home Page; if you want to allow students to view all course content, please contact your Customer Success Manager.</li> <li>Notifications, including course invitations and report downloads, cannot be sent in the beta environment.</li> <li>Crocodoc (annotation tool in SpeedGrader) 
is not available in the beta environment.</li> <li>Any changes you want to keep in the beta environment must be made directly within the production environment before beta is reset.</li> <li>LTI tools (External Apps) are typically not available outside the production environment. LTI tools <em>may</em> display in the beta environment, but often they are only configured for the production environment. Using production-configured LTI tools in the beta environment will affect live data. If you have permission to edit LTI tools, you can confirm the configuration for a specific LTI tool in your course or account. Please contact your Customer Success Manager for specific questions.</li> <li>Account-level user page views always reflect activity from the production environment.</li> <li>Feature option settings are copied from the production environment.</li> </ul>

<p>As an Admin, you can choose to set default restrictions for student access in your institution. These restrictions include student access to courses before the start date and/or after the end date. </p> <p>To manage student access, you can set the default value but allow instructors and sub-account admins to edit access for the course and sub-account levels as necessary, or you can set and lock the student access setting for the entire institution. The checkbox settings at the account level are passed to the sub-account and course levels as default values.</p> <p><strong>Restrict students from viewing course before start date: </strong>When a student enrolls in a future course, the course displays in the Future Enrollments section in the student Courses list. Once a course is published, the course displays an invitation to join the course, where the students can view course content at any time before the course begins. However, when the student restriction for the course start date is <em>enabled</em>, students cannot view a link to the course until the start date, even if the course is published.</p> <p><strong>Restrict students from viewing future courses in enrollments list:</strong> When a student enrolls in a future course, the course displays in the Future Enrollments section in the student Courses list. However, when the <em>view courses before the start date</em> restriction is enabled, a second option is displayed to completely remove the future enrollment from the Courses list. This setting can also be enabled to keep students from knowing they are enrolled in a course with a future start date. </p> <p><strong>Restrict students from viewing course after end date: </strong>Once a course has concluded, students can still view the course but all content is displayed in a read-only state. However, when the student restriction for the course end date is <em>enabled</em>, students can no longer view the course in the Courses list after the course has concluded. This setting can be used if your institution uses the course across multiple terms and want to restrict students from accessing prior content for future students, or if students have to re-enroll in the course. </p> <p>These restriction settings also apply to the override start and end dates for the course. If no override dates are specified, the start and end dates apply to the term dates. Learn more about <span style="color: rgb(38,38,38)"><a href="../../4214/l/64211?data-resolve-url=true&amp;data-manual-id=4214" data-object-class="article" data-object-uuid="E22843BA-DD67-4AB5-AE43-B0300AEC779E" data-object-manual-uuid="2E9EF650-E3D9-012F-D7F2-12313804AAC3" data-resolve-url="true" target="">term and course dates</a></span> in Canvas.</p>

<p>As an admin, you can choose to disable comments on announcements for all courses in an account.</p> <p>To manage comments, you can set the default value but allow instructors and sub-account admins to enable comments as necessary, or you can set and lock the setting for all courses and sub-accounts. The checkbox settings at the account level are passed to the sub-account and course levels as default values.</p>

<p>If you are an international institution, you can change the default language for your entire account. This change will override any browser/OS language settings.</p> <p><strong>Note:</strong> Users can select a preferred language in their user settings, which will override the account default.</p>