By default, Canvas courses are hidden from public view to allow instructors to edit the contents before sharing them with students. Canvas courses must be published before students can view or access them.
Before the semester begins, Canvas course shells are created for all classes. Students enrolled in the class will appear on the roster of People for the course. Students, however, cannot see the Canvas course until an instructor makes it visible to them. You can preview the "student view" of a course prior to publishing it.
Canvas makes it easy to publish a course! You can do it directly from the Dashboard when you sign into Canvas:
Or you can use the Courses function:
Review this short tutorial for publishing. You can also easily unpublish your course via these same methods.
Feel free to publish your course ahead of its start date. You can restrict course participants from viewing your course before the start date in the Settings: Course Details screen. However, if you added someone manually to your course such as another instructor, they will receive a course invitation immediately upon publishing.