Bulk License Presenters via CSV Import

In this section:

Overview

In order to use /wiki/spaces/54/pages/590217403 to record and publish presentations for students, Academic Staff members must have a /wiki/spaces/54/pages/590217291.

The Licensing page of the EchoSystem Server (ESS) provides two methods for licensing presenters for Personal Capture:

The instructions on this page cover running a CSV import from the Manage Presenter Licenses page to assign or revoke Personal Capture licenses.

To open the Manage Presenter Licenses page, navigate to System > Licensing and click Presenter Assignments.

The Import button resides at the bottom of the page.

There is also an Export button that allows you to export a list of currently licensed Personal Capture users. You may want to export a list of currently licensed Personal Capture users to generate a properly formatted CSV file. You can then edit this file for import.

Format

Using a CSV import to bulk assign and revoke licenses for users requires the use of a properly formatted CSV file. The CSV file must include the fields described in the following table. As noted above, it might be easier for you run an export of currently licensed users, then edit this file for import.

Field NameDescription
UsernameCan be the user email address or the User Name string identifier that appears in the User Account section of the /wiki/spaces/54/pages/590217297. Example entry: instructor1@example.com or Instructor Name. We recommend using email address because there is less variance and chance for erroneous entry.
Action

Indicates the action to be taken for the user. Valid actions include:

    • assign - Assigns the specified License ID to the user. License ID field must be populated.
    • autoassign - Assigns the first available license to the user. License ID field should not be populated but will be ignored if it is.  
    • revoke - Revokes the specified License ID from the user. License ID field must be populated.
    • revokeall - Revokes ALL assigned licenses from the user. License ID field should not be populated but will be ignored if it is.
License IDIdentifies the Personal Capture license to be assigned or revoked. The License ID must use the following format: ID yyyy-mm-dd-xxxxxx. Example entry: ID 2013-07-05-012345

The CSV file should appear similar to the table shown below.

UsernameActionLicense ID
instructor1@example.comassignID 2013-07-05-012345
instructor@example.comassignID 2013-07-05-012345
User Name 1revokeID 2013-07-05-012346
User Name 2revokeID 2013-07-05-012346
instructor3@example.comautoassign 
User Name 4revokeall 

There are ways to use existing system information to generate a Personal Capture license import file. See /wiki/spaces/54/pages/590217282 for some suggestions.

Perform a Personal Capture Licensing Import

Once you have generated the *.csv file(s) to assign and/or revoke Personal Capture licenses as necessary, use the following procedure to import the file.

  1. Navigate to System > Licensing.
  2. Click Presenter Assignments.
  3. Click Import. The Import Presenter Licenses page appears as shown in the below figure. 
     Screenshot of Import page for personal capture licenses.
  4. Click Choose File, then navigate to and select the CSV file for import. 
  5. Click Import.
  6. The status of the import appears in the progress window on the page, including any rows that are not processed and the error generated. Make note of these so that you can either fix the file for re-import, or /wiki/spaces/54/pages/590217291.
  7. When the import is complete, click Done.

The Manage Presenter Licenses page reappears, showing the following:

  • The presenters who were licensed during the import now appear in the Revoke Licenses list, indicating they have licenses assigned to them.
  • In addition the licenses listed at the top of the page should have updated Total and Available license counts, indicating that licenses were assigned and/or revoked during the import process.  

Tips for Creating a Properly Formatted CSV File

There are a number of different ways to create a CSV file that is properly formatted to use for bulk assigning or revoking Personal Capture licenses. Besides doing so manually, you can use some of the Export functionality in the ESS to assist you in creating the file. The tips provided here assume you are using Microsoft Excel or other spreadsheet program to generate the file, then saving it as a *.csv file.

Export Existing Personal Capture Users

As stated in the Overview, the Manage Presenter Licenses page contains an Export button that generates a list of currently licensed Personal Capture users in CSV format. Opened in Excel, this CSV file appears as shown in the below figure:

Screenshot of sample personal capture license export.

Notice how the formatting is the same as that required for a Personal Capture licensing import. Also notice how the action column shows assign as the only action. This indicates that the License ID listed is assigned to that user.

Depending on the tasks you need to perform, using the Personal Capture user export might be the most efficient way to generate a proper CSV file for import. For example, you may have users currently assigned a Personal Capture license that must be replaced by a new or updated license. In this case you should revoke the old licenses then assign the new ones to the same users, possibly adding new users to the assignment list if necessary.

To generate a CSV file that revokes old licenses and assigns new ones to existing staff:

  1. Generate the Personal Capture export file by navigating to System > Licensing > Presenter Assignments, then click Export
  2. Open the automatically downloaded file titled licenses.csv.
  3. If desired, sort the file by Username or License ID, depending on how you want to view the list.
    • If you only want to revoke particular Licenses IDs to reassign new, sort by License ID and apply the below instructions to only those rows.
    • If you want to revoke license for only certain Users, sort by Username and apply the below instructions to only those users.
  4. Replace "assign" in the Action column with revoke or revokeall.
    • Revoke will revoke only the listed License ID from that user.
    • Revokeall removes ALL licenses from that user and does not require a License ID, though if one appears the system ignores it.
  5. For all users to whom you will be re-assigning new licenses, copy the Username column entries, then paste the list starting with the first row below the last current entry. This means you will have two sets of the same users in the file, one set below the other. Alternately you can paste this list to a new file to generate two imports: one that revokes licenses and one that assigns them.
  6. Pass through the second (pasted) users list and: 
    • Remove any users who should no longer be assigned a license. 
    • Add any new users who must have a Personal Capture license assigned.
  7. In the Action column for the pasted list of users, enter assign or autoassign as appropriate. You can enter the action into the first row, then copy and paste it to subsequent rows.
  8. If you entered "assign" in the Action column, enter the new License ID to be assigned to the users. You can enter the ID in the first row, then copy and paste it to susbsequent rows. Autoassign does not require entry of a License ID.
  9. Save the file as a *.csv file.

After you have generated the CSV file, use the instructions below to import the file to the ESS.

As indicated in the procedure, you can perform this task using two different CSV files, one that revokes licenses from the username list, and one that assigns new licenses to the username list. This method may be easier if you have a particularly large list of users. Generating two files keeps the list from becoming cumbersome and hard to navigate.

Export the User List

If you need to license a large number of Academic Staff members who do not currently have Personal Capture licenses assigned to them, the easiest way to create the file may be to generate an export of your users list, then copy the User-Name or Email column from that export into a Personal Capture license export file.

The figure below shows a sample User export, the person.csv file, open in Excel and sorted by Organization-Role-Name-1 column.

Screenshot of sample user export.

Depending on whether you have multiple organizations configured for your system, you may be able to use this method to easily identify and select academic staff from the list, and copy and paste their Email or User-Name fields into the Personal Capture licensing CSV import file.

After you have generated the CSV file, use the instructions above to import the file to the ESS

PCAP Licenses are Only Assigned to Academic Staff

If you have multiple organizations and sub-organizations, you may find it difficult to sort the Users export to find only academic staff and copy/paste their User-Name or Email for licensing. However Personal Capture licenses can ONLY be assigned to users with the Academic Staff role assigned to them. So if you accidentally include an Admin or other type of user in the import file, do not worry. If the import process finds other types of users on the list, it will note an error on the processing log and skip that user.