SIS import - adding staff as students - why extra role?

[GideonWilliams]

I have imported staff as students to a training course using the SIS Import CSV

I used the fields: course_id, user_id, role and status

The staff are added to the course but their role name is Student observing: nobody instead of just Student

Is there a reason why I get the observing bit? This does not happen if I manually added staff using the +People option.

Any Admin help would be gratefully appreciated as I have to prepare students to upload to courses at the end of this week!!!

Thanks in advance

Gideon

[chriscas]

Hi @GideonWilliams,

The only time you should see something like that is if the role you specified in the csv is based on the observer role.  In the following sample screenshot, the first line should enroll the user using the default student role in course abcde.  In course vwxyz, the people role would show the Observing:None role, because Waitlisted Student is a custom role at our institution, based on the observer role.  I've never seen any contrary behavior to this, but there's probably a first time for everything...  I believe the roles are case-sensitive as well, but I'm not positive about that.  I'm wondering if there was a typo or you possible used an observer-based role in the csv by mistake?

-Chris

 

 

[GideonWilliams · Accepted solution]

Hi @chriscas 

I thought it might have been a mispelling however, after an exhaustive Google search I found an article that talked about students going on a waiting list that has this permission (as you say).

I checked to see if the course had not been published. It had. However, because the course is a training course, it had not been given a Term but the Participation box below it had been set to Course. The course itself has no start or finish dates so that is why the role added in the observing: nobody as it was on a waiting list.

The solution was to change Participation back to term and re-import and the observing: nobody disappeared.

Bizarre!