Creation of New Canvas User Accounts

Canvas user accounts for UW-Green Bay students, staff and faculty are created automatically through a "just-in-time" provisioning process which can be triggered by either of the following events:

1. The user uses their UWGB network credentials (email and password) to sign into Canvas for the first time.
2. The user is added to a course in SIS that is either ongoing or starts within 75 days. The Canvas-SIS integration will add this enrollment to Canvas and create the user account during the next automatic overnight enrollment sync process.

Neither UWGB IT nor Canvas administrators can manually create Canvas user accounts for UWGB students and employees; UWGB student and employee Canvas accounts must be created through this "just-in-time" provisioning process.

Implications

Users running training and development or orientation courses in Canvas may encounter an issue where they see a "We were unable to find matches below" message after attempting to manually add a brand new employee or newly admitted student to a Canvas course through its People page.

Users can work around this issue by asking the new employee or student to sign into Canvas with their UWGB email and password for the first time from www.uwgb.edu/canvas. When the user signs in, their Canvas user account is created automatically and will then be available for others to find and add to any Canvas course through its People page.

***NOTE***: A known issue with Canvas is causing new user accounts created by first-time sign in since May 2024 to be created without automatically confirming the user's UWGB.EDU email address. New users will need to confirm their email address manually before they can be added to courses by email address through the People page of a Canvas course. Please reference: Canvas - Confirming Your User Account's Email Address. Until this issue is resolved, you would need to ask new users to also manually confirm their email address after signing in to Canvas, or you can use the self-enrollment link method described below.

Another workaround (for non-timetable/non-SIS courses only) is to send the new user the Canvas course's self-enrollment link, which can be enabled and copied from the course's Settings page. New users who click a Canvas course's self-enrollment link will be prompted to sign in to Canvas, and a successful sign-in will automatically create their Canvas user account and enroll it in the course with the Student role. Please see the following Canvas Instructor Guide for more information: How do I enable course self-enrollment with a join code or secret URL?.

Disclaimer

The information in this document does not apply to the "UW Continuing Education Student" user accounts which are used by external community members to access courses in the Continuing Education instance of Canvas.