Instructure Builds a Stronger Foundation for Community with Higher Logic Vanilla

Running a Community While Managing Around the Platform

Instructure, the leading learning technology ecosystem and maker of Canvas, runs a global customer community that supports millions of users across products, services, and support experiences. The community is deeply embedded in how customers find answers, how teams deflect support cases, and how the company communicates at scale.

Renee Carney, Senior Director of Community at Instructure, is responsible for that ecosystem. Her team works closely with support, product, services, marketing, and sales to align the community with both customer needs and business priorities.

For a community operating at this scale, reliability matters just as much as innovation—and continuity of experience is non-negotiable. When Instructure reached a point where a platform change was unavoidable, the community team focused on protecting the customer experience while preparing for what came next.

When Standing Still Was No Longer an Option

Over time, Instructure began to see growing gaps between what their existing community platform promised and what it consistently delivered. While the platform had once supported their needs, several factors made it increasingly difficult to sustain at enterprise scale.

Simple structural changes required deep backend work, limiting administration to a small group of people who knew how to navigate the complexity safely. “The admin side was very complicated,” Renee explained. “Designing spaces and structure on the backend took a lot of work.”

Search was another persistent issue. Customers struggled to find the right content even when it existed, creating frustration and additional support burden.

Beyond functionality, the relationship itself began to change. Strategic support declined, the partnership felt more transactional, and product progress slowed. Future improvements were often positioned as “coming soon,” but never materialized in a way that felt viable.

The team managed around these limitations for as long as they could, but no meaningful improvement was in sight. At the same time, internal pressure was building around data reliability and the team’s ability to demonstrate community impact. “We couldn’t connect our data the way we needed to,” Renee said. “That made it really hard to confidently speak to impact with leadership.”

As expectations around measurement increased, the cost of staying on the platform became harder to justify. “We knew that any path forward was going to require a full migration,” Renee said. “At that point, we owed it to our customers to step back and evaluate what would truly give them the best experience.”

Designing A Deliberate and Inclusive Evaluation Process

Renee approached the evaluation process in a way that was intentionally broad and inclusive. The community team developed a detailed rubric outlining what was required to support both current needs and future growth, then opened the process across the organization. 

Demos were shared broadly, feedback was gathered through surveys, and cross-functional stakeholders were actively involved.  “The community really does belong to everyone in the company,” Renee said. “Having that level of involvement made a big difference in how confident we felt in the decision.”

Feature depth mattered, particularly around search, discovery, and the ability to support complexity without overcomplicating navigation. But when it came time to decide, one factor outweighed the rest.

“Partnership,” Renee said. “Customer experience is everything. You can work through a lot of things if you know someone’s by your side.”

Higher Logic Vanilla stood out for the way the team engaged early in the evaluation process, listening closely, asking follow-up questions, and demonstrating a deep understanding of both Instructure’s needs and the competitive landscape.

A Migration Defined by What Didn’t Happen

The migration required careful planning, particularly when it came to mapping thousands of resources and managing redirects. 

Late in the process, unexpected challenges emerged when legacy data arrived much later than expected. Rather than delaying launch, Higher Logic’s implementation team partnered with Instructure to design custom scripts that programmatically mapped and migrated critical content, preserved URLs and redirects, and ensured customers would still land where they expected.

“Being able to work with the Higher Logic implementation team and create custom scripts gave us confidence in our ability to move without disrupting our customers,” Renee said.

When the new community went live, the result was exactly what Instructure had hoped for. “It did not disrupt their day,” Renee said. “Nobody panicked. That’s how we knew we did it right.”

What Changed After the Move

Although the community had only recently gone live, value was evident almost immediately.

On the administrative side, the platform made it easier to manage branding and collaborate across teams. Tasks that once required specialized backend knowledge could now be handled more broadly, improving speed and efficiency. “The admin experience is so easy that anyone on my team can go in and make updates,” Renee said.

For customers, improvements to search and content discovery were noticeable right away. “Search was one of our biggest pain points before,” Renee said. “The difference now is night and day.”

Just as important, the team gained confidence in their data—from engagement insights to sentiment—creating a foundation for deeper analysis and more informed decision-making over time. “We can now see where people are going, what they’re doing, and we can trust that data,” Renee said.

A Dependable Foundation for What Comes Next

With the migration complete, Instructure now views its community as a long-term foundation for customer experience that supports both immediate needs and future innovation. “I believe community should be the front door to every customer experience,” Renee said.

Looking ahead, the team is focused on continuing to integrate community across the broader customer journey while exploring new ways to improve efficiency, discovery, and engagement.

“Other solutions offer aging, high-maintenance technology you largely have to manage on your own,” Renee said. “Higher Logic delivers a modern platform backed by true partnership that helps you move faster and smarter.”