Address recurring course questions in Canvas
When the same question keeps arriving by email, help learners find the answer together in a Canvas discussion.
Trigger
New Email Received
Trigger for new emails in an AgentMail inbox
Action
Create discussion entry
Tool to create a new entry in a canvas discussion topic. use when posting a message with optional attachments to a discussion topic.
Why this helps
Repeated individual email replies consume time and leave other learners unable to benefit from the answer.
- Address repeated questions in a shared course space
- Reduce duplicate individual replies
- Help learners discover useful answers
Setup
Build it in a few focused steps.
- 1Connect Agent mail and Canvas once in the Notis portal.
- 2Create an automation in Automations, New Automation, and name it for recurring questions.
- 3Tell Notis how to recognize repeat questions from available email context and create a helpful discussion entry when appropriate.
- 4Choose New Email Received as the trigger and set the run report destination.
- 5Test with one real recurring question email and check the discussion entry.
Questions about this workflow
Can Notis know that a question has appeared before?
Notis can analyze the information returned in the workflow context. If it needs a longer history or a specific baseline, describe that information in your instruction or provide it explicitly.
Will every similar email create a new entry?
Tell Notis to create an entry only when the message meets your criteria, and specify how to handle repeats or uncertain matches.
When this happens · Trigger
Do this · Action
Supported Triggers and Actions
Notis builds workflows that link Agent mail to Canvas. A trigger fires from one place; an action lands in another.
Agent mail triggers
Canvas actions
Recurring trigger
Notis starts this workflow on a schedule, such as daily, weekly, or during business hours.
Create account notification
Creates a global notification within a canvas account, ensuring `end at` is after `start at` and any specified `notification roles` are valid.
Webhook trigger
Notis starts this workflow when an external tool or custom backend sends an HTTP request.
Create appointment group
Creates a new appointment group in canvas for schedulable time slots within specified course or group contexts.
New Email Received
Trigger for new emails in an AgentMail inbox
Create an assignment
Creates a new assignment within a specified course in canvas lms.
Create assignment override
Creates an assignment override to adjust due/unlock/lock dates for an assignment in a course, targeting specific students (requires `title`), a group, or a course section; at least one target (`student ids`, `group id`, or `course section id`) is required.
Create Calendar Event
Creates a calendar event with options for recurrence (finite `rrule` series only), section-specific timings, and blackout dates within a specified context.
Create communication channel
Creates a new communication channel (e.g., email, sms, push) for an existing canvas user to receive notifications.
Create content share
Shares a canvas content item to specified users, if the sender has necessary permissions and receiver ids are valid.
Create conversation
Use to send messages in canvas by creating a new conversation or adding to an existing one; an existing conversation with the same recipients (and matching scope/filter, if specified) may be reused unless `force new` is true.
Connect any two apps with Notis in the middle.
Agent mail and Canvas, or any other combination from 1,000+ integrations.
When this happens · Trigger
Do this · Action
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