The Manager Dashboard and Learning Groups tools require information about users that are most likely maintained in your Human Resources Information System (HRIS). These features rely on your organization’s hierarchy, reporting structure, and other attributes that you must specify to enable managers and learning administrators to enroll users into groups and courses.
D2L requires uploading a CSV file to define and maintain the attributes associated to users and import them into Manager Dashboard and Learning Groups. You may be able to set up an auto-generated CSV file that regularly updates employee information from your organization’s HRIS to update Manager Dashboard. (Ensure that the CSV file size is no larger than 2GB.)
D2L offers three potential access points for uploading a CSV file of employee attributes from your HRIS to Manager Dashboard:
- Manual upload via the user interface of Brightspace. Access the Attributes tool in the Admin tools menu of LE. You can manually import your CSV file from the Bulk Attribute Upload tab using the provided file template every time you have an employee update.
- Integration Pack for Student Information Systems (IPSIS) – D2L Standard CSV Integration. To learn more about this option, refer to: Using IPSIS to import user attributes.
- API service - To learn how to develop your API solution to import user attributes, contact your D2L representative (Implementation Services, Account Management, or Customer Success).
Note: D2L recommends engagement with D2L Implementation Services to configure a custom option for your organization.
CSV validation
The CSV validation checks applies to all three import methods (Manual, API and IPSIS):
- Files will not process if any validation error is detected.
- Only required columns must be present in CSV file. Any missing required column will fail validation. Any other missing column is ignored.
- Only select users need to be in the CSV file (i.e. doesn’t require all users). Only listed users are processed.
- Any empty cell will be processed as a deletion of that attribute value for the user.
- Invalid column not in schema will fail validation.
- Invalid CSV (i.e. un-escaped string values) will fail validation.
- The system looks up each “user” datatype (username, manager) in Brightspace and any invalid match will fail validation.
- Any value not in range defined by schema will fail validation.
- String checks string length.
- Date checks date range.
- CSV file size must be less than 2GB.
- The d2l.Tools.ManagerRole.CoursesAvailableToAssign configuration variable must be set correctly for the Affiliated Org Units reserved attribute to process.
Download the CSV file template from Brightspace
Before you begin: Ensure the d2l.Tools.ManagerRole.CoursesAvailableToAssign configuration variable is set with the correct course assignment option for your organization.
- From the Admin Tools menu, click Attributes.
- Click Bulk Attribute Upload.
- Click Download template.
Important: If you do not have data for any of the defined attributes, remove the header from the template. Those columns will be ignored during import. Individual cells can also be left blank. These attributes will be left undefined on the first import, or will clear any defined data on subsequent imports.
If you want to set course assignment availability using Attributes, ensure the User Attributes are correctly updated with the org unit codes of departments with courses that are available to managers, in addition to setting the configuration variable.
Import attributes manually
Before you begin:
- Ensure that all users have the correct roles and required permissions in Brightspace. All users must already exist in Brightspace before you can associate attributes to them.
- Ensure the d2l.Tools.ManagerRole.CoursesAvailableToAssign configuration variable is set with the correct course assignment option for your organization.
- From the Admin Tools menu, click Attributes.
- Click Bulk Import.
- Select the CSV file you want to import.
- Click Apply changes.
Using IPSIS to import user attributes
Before you begin: Ensure the d2l.Tools.ManagerRole.CoursesAvailableToAssign configuration variable is set with the correct course assignment option for your organization.
- You must use the D2L Standard CSV option to import user attributes to Manager Dashboard and Learning Groups. This requires you to zip your CSV files (even if you are only uploading a single file).
- The system checks for new files to process in the designated SFTP site every 10 minutes.
- D2L recommends using the Users D2L Standard CSV version 1.1.
- The IPSIS Administration Dashboard provides the processing status of the latest batch. Both the Dashboard and Batches pages will show a final indicator if the batch completed successfully or with errors. Each batch has a quick link to the Audit Log and if completed with errors to Error Messages.