Associate Blueprint course using Canvas course ID

[bbennett2]

We're experimenting with Blueprint courses and I'm trying to find the best way to manage template courses.

The documentation lists the SIS_ID as the required ID to make an association. But, we don't create empty classes in our SIS for blueprints.We would like to use a manually-created and shared course to make those changes to keep our SIS and LMS data segmented.

I went ahead and made a courses.csv from the admin panel to grab a subaccount and noticed the "blueprint_course_id" field didn't specify which was necessary. I tried it with a Canvas course ID and no luck, which makes sense. My current plan is to use a courses CSV from the admin reports to grab all of the upcoming Course IDs and then use a script to read from that and associate via the API.

I'm wondering if anyone else is using a similar method - not creating Blueprint shells from the SIS - to manage these master classes. What do you do differently? Is there a better way to make these associations?

[rmurchshafer · Accepted solution]

I'm only partially following what you wrote, but with our limited use of BluePrint courses I create them all manually.  I also set up the associations manually so that doesn't help your situation.  But, in many cases with courses I've created manually I assign it a SIS_ID so that I can run .csv imports of enrollments. With courses that we use for New Student Orientation, I create them manually, type in an SIS_ID following an established pattern, and then one of developers has API processes to enroll the students based on those SIS_IDs. 

So I guess what I'm saying is will it work for you to manually enter an SIS_ID into your Blueprint courses and then in a script have your associated courses use that SIS_ID in the data feed?

Rick

[rmurchshafer · Accepted solution]

I'm only partially following what you wrote, but with our limited use of BluePrint courses I create them all manually.  I also set up the associations manually so that doesn't help your situation.  But, in many cases with courses I've created manually I assign it a SIS_ID so that I can run .csv imports of enrollments. With courses that we use for New Student Orientation, I create them manually, type in an SIS_ID following an established pattern, and then one of developers has API processes to enroll the students based on those SIS_IDs. 

So I guess what I'm saying is will it work for you to manually enter an SIS_ID into your Blueprint courses and then in a script have your associated courses use that SIS_ID in the data feed?

Rick

[bbennett2 · Accepted solution]

Thanks Rick.

When the SIS ID, is that just a unique ID in the system? Or does it have to map to an actual course in your SIS?

What I ended up doing was pulling a provisioning CSV for courses and then using the API to make the association because it allows me to use a Canvas course ID rather than an SIS ID, so I was able to do it. It's just strange that it works with one but not the other.

[rmurchshafer]

The SIS_ID can be any unique identifier.  I use them all the time with no actual link to any number in our SIS.  The only thing that matters is that the API process knows to use that unique indentifier as the SIS_ID.

Rick