Find Help Faster with the Canvas Chatbot

When you need assistance with a question about Canvas, one of the ways you can quickly find help is through the NU Canvas Support Chatbot. Located in Canvas via the Ask button at the bottom of the left-hand global navigation, the AI-powered NU Canvas Support Chatbot can search for answers to your questions in Instructure’s Canvas guides as well as Northwestern’s Canvas Learning Center, Zoom Learning Center, and Knowledge Base for links to relevant support documentation. In addition, it also provides instructors and staff with an immediate resolution to two types of Canvas requests – creating a prep site so you can prepare materials for a future course and adding storage space to your Canvas course when you are running low. The chatbot can do these tasks for you directly, eliminating the need to place a request with Northwestern IT and wait for it to be processed.

New Handoff to Instructure Live Chat

So what happens if you have a Canvas question but you aren’t quite sure if the documentation provided answers exactly the question you asked? Normally, when the chatbot recognizes it cannot help you further, it will escalate your issue to Northwestern IT support staff via a help ticket. And while support staff does their best to answer questions as quickly as possible, if you ask a question after hours or over the weekend, it may be 24 hours or more before hearing back.

To provide a better support experience through the chatbot, the Teaching & Learning Technologies team has enabled a handoff to the Instructure Support Live Chat directly from the chatbot dialog. Now, if you reach a point where the chatbot recognizes it cannot help you further, you will be provided the option to talk to a Live Chat Agent at Instructure (the company behind Canvas) in addition to the option to create a ticket with Northwestern IT.

Here’s what that option will look like in the chatbot dialog:

Please note: this is not a true handoff in that the Instructure Support Agent will not receive a transcript of the existing conversation. When you are connected to the live chat, you’ll need to re-state your issue for them. 

Appropriate Question Types for Canvas Support Live Chat

The vendor-provided Canvas Support Live Chat from Instructure can only answer questions about the core functionality of Canvas, i.e. something for which there is existing support documentation.  They are not able to answer questions about Northwestern-specific issues, such as questions relating to your NetID, anything CAESAR-related (like when you will see a course in Canvas you just registered for), or questions about any of our add-on educational tools like Zoom, Course Reserves, or Panopto.

Questions about the NU Canvas Support Chatbot? Email us at canvas@northwestern.edu.