If you want to enable users in your organization who do not have direct access to your file server to add input files 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-BCE then your inbox folder is \content\enforced\138731-BCE\Inbox and your outbox folder is \content\enforced\138731-BCE\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 Bulk Course Export 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, complete the following actions:
- Choose the Create a new course template and a new course offering that has never been offered before option 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 New Department option and fill in the Name and Code fields, or select a suitable department that already exists.
- Click Next.
- On the Enter Course Information page, enter the Course Offering Name and the Course Offering Code. For example, Bulk Course Export and BCE.
- 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 tasks:
- From the Admin Tools menu, click Bulk Tool Configuration > Bulk Course Export.
- 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-BCE/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-BCE/Outbox. - Click Save.
Grant users access to specify courses to export in the course shell
The following permissions enable users to specify courses to export 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.
- In the Course Offering section, select the See the File Listing, Upload Files, and Edit Files permissions and then click Save and Close.
Export courses using the course offering
You must be enrolled in the course and have an Active status to see the bulk course export offering in the course selector and Manage Files area.
Note: Brightspace course packages now include metadata that identify the Course Name, Course Code, and Language used in the course. This metadata is displayed in the IMSManifest.XML.
- From the course selector, open the BCE course offering.
- In the Course Administration widget, click Manage Files.
- Click the Inbox folder.
- Click Upload to upload the CSV file listing the course offerings to the export process.
- After the scheduled task runs, to download an exported course offering’s content package, click the Outbox folder and then click the name of the zip file containing the course offering’s components. You will encounter an error if one or more course offerings are not exported.
Sample Log File for BCE
Bulk Course Create Export generates logs only if an input file is processed.
Below is an example of a BCE log file showing the successful export of a course offering. In this block, you can see that a ZIP package for the specified course offering with the Org Unit ID 7331 was successfully created.
INFO 2023-05-18 04:00:05 - Started processing files for organization with id '6606'.
INFO 2023-05-18 04:00:05 - Started processing file '[org: 6606; location: \\fs-LVU\LVU\web\content\LVU\BulkTools\BCE\Inbox\Sample BCE.csv]'
INFO 2023-05-18 04:00:05 – Started processing line with number '1' for 'Sample BCE.csv'
INFO 2023-05-18 04:00:05 – Started parsing line '12345,Grammar 1001,Grammar_1001'
INFO 2023-05-18 04:02:35 – Finished parsing line '12345,Grammar 1001,Grammar_1001' line
INFO 2023-05-18 04:02:35 – Finished processing line number ‘1’ for 'Sample BCE.csv'
INFO 2023-05-18 04:02:35 –
INFO 2023-05-18 04:02:35 – Finished processing file '[org: 6606; location: \\fs-LVU\LVU\web\content\LVU\BulkTools\BCE\Inbox\Sample BCE.csv]'
INFO 2023-05-18 04:02:35 – Finished processing files for organization with id '6606'.