In addition to receiving communications from your instructor (e.g., announcements), you can reach out to fellow students and contact your instructor using the Canvas Message Center.

The functionality of the Canvas Message Center includes:

Send a message to someone in your course or group
Reply to messages from others in your course
Filter conversations by course or type
View and reply to assignment submission comments

You can indicate with your notification settings how quickly you wish to be notified of messages sent to your Canvas Inbox (immediately, daily or weekly summary, or not at all).

If you'd prefer not to 'deal' with the Canvas Message Center, that's ok too. Canvas typically forwards any messages you've received to the e-mail address it has on file for you. Impressively, once the message is forwarded to your e-mail, you can respond directly to the message via e-mail without ever going to your Canvas Inbox.

Instructure Canvas Inbox

Canvas Inbox (video and script) from Canvas LMS

When done, click on the 'Next' button.