I am researching ILP v5 to see what the pros/cons are. We're currently using informer to generate CSV files which we then upload via SFTP to Canvas. I've roughly implemented posting the CSV files to canvas, but I like how the SFTP upload sends us an email summary at the end of processing. It seems to process the files on the half-hour, so rather than reinvent the wheel with the email summary we're currently leaning towards keeping the status quo. However, if ILP will push data real-time and handle a large percentage of our needs, we may implement it.
From the posts I've read, it sounds as if we need to implement Publisher/Subscriber flavor of Ethos Integration, and not just the Proxy API. I just can't imagine how ILP would be listening for changes to push over otherwise.
It also sounds like we may still need to push in some CSV SIS Imports for blueprints and employee accounts using our current methods. Unless something has changed, I don't believe that ILP pushes over employee accounts. Only students and faculty.
A few questions that I have are found below. Some have been answered in eCommunities with regards to v4.
- Is it possible to assign blueprints to courses using ILP? Or would this be another supplemental SIS CSV import?
- Does ILP un-sticky fields in its API calls?
- How does ILP handle sub accounts?
- From what a colleague told me, v4 creates sub accounts based upon department the section is in.
- Are we able to pick and choose which departments get sub accounts?
- Our Course IDs in canvas are SEC.NAME_SEC.TERM, but it sounds like ILP uses the actual COURSE.ID as the identifier. Is this configurable?
- I've read that cross-listing is an issue with ILP, where it merges all sections into a single course instead of cross listing the sections in Canvas like we're used to. Is this still the case?
- From what I've read, employees aren't brought over via the sync. It only pushes Faculty and Students. I suppose that we'll still need to supplement with a custom SIS import?
- Does grading via ILP forces you to do grading on the Canvas side? Or can you do a mixture of both? Will grades entered into Colleague push over to Canvas?
- A colleague replied that in v4, Canvas -> Colleague works one way with regards to grades.
- Does your institution use Canvas' anonymous grading? Does this play well with ILP?
- How much time did it take to get Ethos Integration Services running? Did you have to do a lot of data cleanup?
- How much time did it take to implement and get ILP up and running?
- Any *gotchas* to look out for?
- As usual, any lessons learned, recommendations, issues encountered, business process changes, etc?
- Very interested to hear about your experience with v5 so far.
