If you want to enable users in your organization who do not have direct access to your file server to add course offerings to the bulk course tools, you can set up a course offering shell to provide access to the inbox and outbox folders through Brightspace.
Enrolling users into the course shell will enable them to gain access to the inbox location.
You do this by creating a new course offering and then, in Bulk Tool Configuration, setting the Inbox Path and Outbox Path to subfolders of the course offering path. For example, if your Course Offering Path is \content\enforced\138731-CCB then your inbox folder is \content\enforced\138731-CCB\Inbox and your outbox folder is \content\enforced\138731-CCB\Outbox\.
Note: If you have set the d2l.Tools.CMS.CoursePathEnforced configuration variable to Off, you can customize the course offering path. If you customize the course offering path, the bulk export folders must still be located under the organization’s \content\ directory.
Create a Copy Course Bulk course shell
- From the Admin Tools menu, click Course Management.
- On the Manage Courses page, click Create a New Course Offering or Template.
- If you already have a generic support or system template for course offerings that are used for purposes other than teaching, complete the following actions:
- Choose the Create a new course offering based on an existing template option.
- Select the template from the drop-down list or click Search for template to locate the template on a search page.
- Click Next.
- If you do not already have an appropriate template, follow these steps:
- Choose the option Create a new course template and a new course offering that has never been offered before and then click Next.
- On the Enter Template Information page, enter a Course Template Name and Course Template Code. For example, enter “System” for both the name and code.
- Click the option New Department and fill in the Name and Code fields, or select a suitable department.
- Click Next.
- On the Enter Course Information page, enter the Course Offering Name and the Course Offering Code. For example, Copy Course Bulk and CCB.
- Click Create.
- After the course is created, click Modify the new course offering.
- Make note of the Course Offering Path. In Bulk Tool Configuration, you configure the inbox and outbox paths as subfolders of this path.
- From the course selector, open the bulk course offering.
- In the Course Administration widget, click Manage Files.
- Create the inbox and outbox folders:
- Click New Folder, type Inbox as the folder name, and then click Save.
- Click New Folder, type Outbox as the folder name, and then click Save.
- Configure the inbox and outbox paths, by completing the following actions:
- From the Admin Tools menu, click Bulk Tool Configuration > Bulk Course Copy.
- In the Inbox Path section, click Change Path and then browse to the inbox path under the course offering path. For example,
/content/enforced/138731-CCB/Inbox. - In the Outbox Path section, click Change Path and then browse to the outbox path under the course offering path. For example,
/content/enforced/138731-CCB/Outbox. - Click Save.
Grant users access to the course shell
The following permissions enable users to specify courses to copy when the next scheduled task runs by uploading CSV files to the inbox folder using the Manage Courses tool inside the course offering.
Note: Enrolling users into the course shell enables them to gain access to the inbox location.
- From the Admin Tools menu, click Roles and Permissions.
- Click the role that you want to grant permissions.
- In the Filter by Tool list, select Manage Files and then click Apply Filter.
- Under Course Offering, select the See the File Listing, Upload Files, and Edit Files permissions and then click Save and Close.
Copy courses using the course offering
You must be enrolled in the course and have an Active status to see the CCB course offering in the course selector and Manage Files area.
- From the course selector, open the CCB course offering.
- In the Course Administration widget, click Manage Files.
- To add course offerings to the copy process, click the Inbox folder and then click Upload to upload the CSV file listing the course offerings.
- After the scheduled task runs, confirm that the course offerings were copied successfully. You will encounter an error if one or more course offerings are not copied.
Access the View Copy Course History page
The View Copy Course History page displays the history of course copying events in Brightspace. You can filter the events by Source course, Destination course and by Date Range. The page displays all successful and unsuccessful course copy events according to the criteria selected. Users may also download the results of the query as a .txt file.
From the Admin Tools menu, click View Copy Course History.
Bulk Course Copy Workflow
The Bulk Course Copy workflow starts by processing each line in the CSV file and creating the corresponding course offering. The log file contains a block for each line in the CSV and indicates if the course was successfully created or if an error occurred when attempting to read the line.
Sample Log File for CCB
Bulk Course Copy generates logs only if an input file is processed.
Below is an example of a CCB log file showing the successful creation of a course offering. In this block, you can see that a new course offering with the Org Unit ID 54321 was successfully created.
INFO 2023-05-17 18:05:37 - Started processing files for organization with id '6606'.
INFO 2023-05-17 18:05:37 - Started processing file '[org: 6606; location: \\fs-LVU\LVU\web\content\LVU\BulkTools\CCB\Inbox\Sample CCB.csv]'
INFO 2023-05-17 18:05:37 - Started processing line with number '1' for ‘Sample CCB.csv' file.
INFO 2023-05-17 18:05:37 - Started parsing line: '12345,Grammar 1001,Grammar_1001, ENG_CT,Term_A'
INFO 2023-05-17 18:05:37 - Finished parsing line: '12345,Grammar 1001,Grammar_1001, ENG_CT,Term_A'
INFO 2023-05-17 18:05:37 - Try to create new course with offering code: Grammar_1001 and offering name: Grammar 1001
INFO 2023-05-17 18:05:38 - New course has been successfully created with course offering id: 54321
INFO 2023-05-17 18:05:38 - Try to create content path for course with id: 54321
INFO 2023-05-17 18:05:38 - Content path [org: 6606; location: \\fs-LVU\LVU\web\content\LVU\enforced\54321-Grammar_1001] has been successfully created for course with id: 54321
INFO 2023-05-17 18:05:38 - Finished processing line with number '1' for 'Sample CCB.csv' file.
INFO 2023-05-17 18:05:38 -
INFO 2023-05-17 18:05:38 - Finished processing file '[org: 6606; location: \\fs-LVU\LVU\web\content\LVU\BulkTools\CCB\Inbox\Sample CCB.csv]'
INFO 2023-05-17 18:05:38 - Finished processing files for organization with id '6606'.
Post-Processing Action
Once each line has been processed and the course offerings created, the next step is the creation of Copy Jobs to copy the content from the source course to the destination. The creation of the job does not indicate that the copy is complete but rather that the copy action has been placed in a queue for processing.
This example CCB log shows the post-processing portion of the bulk copy. This block of the log indicates that a copy job has been created and identifies the source and destination course.
INFO 2023-01-13 20:19:52 - Started post-processing files for organization with id '6606'.
INFO 2023-01-13 20:19:52 - Creating job to copy from 7009 to 7011
INFO 2023-01-13 20:19:52 - Job was successfully created, to see the results go to the Copy History for OrgUnitId 7011
Once all copy jobs have been created the CCB scheduled task will be complete but the action of copying the content to the new courses will continue to run in the background. You can view the status of the copy job in the Copy Course History page of the Admin Tools Menu or in the Copy Course Components History page of the specific course offering.