Canvas @ Yale

Requesting Non-Yale User (Guest) Accounts for Canvas

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Faculty and students from outside of Yale University may need access to Canvas @ Yale courses as they are participating officially or unofficially in a course. Please follow these steps to request either a single Canvas guest account or bulk Canvas accounts for non-Yale users, also known as guest accounts.

Users who have a Yale NetID and an @yale.edu email address are not  considered "Guests" and should not be requested through a Guest Account Request.

Guest accounts will not automatically be added to any courses.

Single Canvas Guest Account Requests

Please allow 3-5 business days for these requests to be completed. You will be notified when the guest account has been created.

  1. Go to the Guest Account Request Form and select that you are "requesting only one guest account" from the drop down.
  2. Select the purpose of the guest account:
    1. A secondary account for myself - Yale faculty and support staff may want / need a secondary Canvas account to use for testing and piloting tools
    2. An account for a non-Yale participant - a guest user from outside of Yale that needs access to a course or program
    3. An account for a Yale affiliate without a Yale NetID - some Yale community members are not issued a NetID which grants them access to Canvas, such as Yale alumni.
  3. Complete the rest of the form with the user's name, email address, and default password. When done click the "Submit" button.

Bulk Canvas Guest Account Requests

Please allow 3-5 business days for these requests to be completed. You will be notified when the guest accounts have been created.

  1. Go to the Guest Account Request Form and select that you are "requesting more than one guest account" from the drop down.
  2. Read through the instructions on the form and download a copy of the Bulk Guest Account Template.
    1. We recommend that you always download a fresh copy of the template each time you need to submit a bulk request to ensure that your submission is not corrupted in any way.
  3. Enter in your user data into the Bulk Guest Account Template Template, and save your completed file as a .CSV (Comma Delimited) file.
    1. Do not save the file as CSV (Macintosh), CSV - UTF-8 (Comma delimited) or CSV (MS-DOS).

In the template, a sample row (Row 2) is provided as an example of how to format your data. Please remove the sample student row before you enter you user data.  

The template includes three columns with the following headings. For each column you will enter in the information as follows:

  1. full_name - Enter the user's first name and last name (Example: John Doe)
  2. password - Enter a generic password of at least 8 characters
    1. You will likely want to pick one generic password that you give to all of your students.
    2. When the user logs in for the first time, they will be able to change their password to something unique.
  3. email - Enter the user's email address

For instructions on how guest users change their password, please visit the Accessing and Managing Canvas as a Non-Yale User (Guest Account) article.

Header names must not be modified. Any deviation in the Row 1 header titles for the columns will cause the bulk account creation to fail, and the file will be sent back to the requester for revision.

  1. Back on the Guest Account Request Form, provide the course or program name that this bulk guest account request is for.
  2. Click the "Required - Upload" button and select your newly saved CSV file with your users' information.
  3. Once your CSV file appears under the "Mass Upload File" heading, click the "Submit" button to finalize your request.

Adding a Guest Account User to a Canvas Course

Once the account(s) is created, you can add users to any course by going to the course site and using the "People" tool. For instructions on how to add users to a course, please visit our Adding a Guest Account User article.

For more help, please contact [email protected].

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