Import Sections
In this section:
Required Configuration
Before you can import sections into the EchoSystem Server (ESS), you must have already defined the courses. The first required field of the sections import is the unique course identifier. This field must match to a pre-existing course.
The "email" fields in the CSV file must match one of the pre-existing users in the ESS. Users specified in the email fields of the CSV file but do not have the Academic Staff role in the section's organization will be assigned the role. You may consider performing a User export (Configuration > Users > Export) to provide you with a list of user email addresses to use.
Format
Importing sections into the ESS requires that you create a CSV or "comma-separated-value" file. The file can have any name you want, as long as it contains a .csv extension. The file format must be as follows:
- There is one course record per line of the file.
- The first line of the file must have the column names, as shown in the example below.
- Each record value is contained in its own column (if the CSV file is generated by a spreadsheet program, such as Excel) or is separated by a comma in the flat (text) file.
You may want to generate an export of existing sections (Schedule > Courses > Export Sections) to provide a formatted CSV file to use as a base.
You can also update section information in the exported file, then reimport the file to apply the changes to the system.
The column headers and field values are as follows; use UTF-8 ascii characters only:
| Field Name | Description |
Course-ID | The unique IDs defined in the ESS for the Courses (which must pre-exist). The easiest way to get this data is to export the courses (Schedule > Courses > Export Courses) or to create your Course CSV import file, then import that file immediate before importing the Section CSV file. |
Section-Name | The plain-text name that you want to show to users in the ESS and in recordings. |
Term-Name | Must match a pre-existing term name. |
Section-URL | Must be blank. Will be ignored if not blank. |
External-System-ID1 | The unique identifier for this section in your LMS. EchoSystem will use this to publish presentation links to the correct section. |
External-System-ID2 | A second unique identifier for this section in your LMS. EchoSystem will use this to publish presentation links to the correct section. |
External-System-ID3 | A third unique identifier for this section in your LMS. EchoSystem will use this to publish presentation links to the correct section. |
External-System-ID4 | A fourth unique identifier for this section in your LMS. EchoSystem will use this to publish presentation links to the correct section. |
External-System-ID5 | A fifth unique identifier for this section in your LMS. EchoSystem will use this to publish presentation links to the correct section. |
External-System-ID6 | A sixth unique identifier for this section in your LMS. EchoSystem will use this to publish presentation links to the correct section. |
Email-Instructor1 | A pre-existing User that will be associated with this section as an instructor. |
Email-Instructor2 | A pre-existing User that will be associated with this section as an instructor. |
Email-Teaching-Assistant1 | A pre-existing User that will be associated with this section as a Teaching Assistant. |
Email-Teaching-Assistant2 | A pre-existing User that will be associated with this section as a Teaching Assistant. |
Email-Guest-Presenter1 | A pre-existing User that will be associated with this section as a Guest Presenter. |
Email-Guest-Presenter2 | A pre-existing User that will be associated with this section as a Guest Presenter. |
Email-Student-Presenter1 | A pre-existing User that will be associated with this section as a Student Presenter. |
Email-Student-Presenter2 | A pre-existing User that will be associated with this section as a Student Presenter. |
Import Considerations
If you are importing more than 1,000 sections, divide the sections into multiple independent CSV files where each has 1,000 or fewer sections. Then import the files separately. For example, if you are importing 2,345 sections, you could divide them into three separate files with 800, 800, and 745 entries. You would then import the three files.
CSV Example
Following is an example of the format for this file:
