User Authorization Data Integration

COMMS supports bulk import of user authorization data to streamline the management of organizational unit permissions. The system currently supports the following user authorizations:

  • Department Owner
  • Course Owner
  • Course Contributor

Required Data

To integrate your user authorization data into the COMMS application, the following format and field details must be followed.

Department Owner

The Department Owner dataset specifies which users are designated as owners of particular departments, identified by their email addresses.

Required Fields

  • DepartmentCode
    A data key that MUST match an existing Department Code within your institution.

  • Email
    The full email address of the user. If the user does not already exist in COMMS, a new user record will be created automatically.

Example

departmentcode|email
COMP|john.smith@mycollege.com
CSP|martha.jones@mycollege.com

Course Owner

The Course Owner dataset specifies which users are designated as owners of particular courses, identified by their email addresses.

Required Fields

  • CourseCode
    A data key that MUST match an existing Course Code within your institution.

  • Email
    The full email address of the user. If the user does not already exist in COMMS, a new user record will be created automatically.

Example

coursecode|email
ARCH1005|alice.green@mycollege.com
ARCH1013|brian.lee@mycollege.com

Optional Data Fields

Course Version

A version code can also optionally be applied to each Course in the Course Owner data file. This version code allows more the one version of a Course to be running at one time. A good example would be if a Course was redeveloped and both the old version and new version of the Course had the same CourseCode the CourseVersion would be used to distinguish the two versions of the course. To include an optional Course version add a column of data for each Course titled CourseVersion. Then for each Course record that follows supply a text based version code which can contain anything a college would like to use. If this field is left blank for a Course COMMS will assume there is only one version of this Course.

  • CourseVersion A text based version code up to the maximum length of 50 characters. The combination of CourseCode and CourseVersion must match existing Course Version within your institution.

Example Data Required:

coursecode|courseversion|email
ARCH1005|2015-2016|alice.green@mycollege.com
ARCH1013|version2|brian.lee@mycollege.com

Course Contributor

The Course Contributor dataset specifies users who have contributor access to specific courses. Contributors can edit course content but do not have full ownership permissions and are not permitted to submit an outline for review.

Required Fields

  • CourseCode
    A data key that MUST match an existing Course Code within your institution.

  • ContributorEmail
    The full email address of the contributor. If the user does not already exist in COMMS, a new user record will be created automatically.

Example

coursecode|contributoremail
ARCH1005|alice.green@mycollege.com
ARCH1013|brian.lee@mycollege.com

Optional Data Fields

Course Version

A version code can also optionally be applied to each Course in the Course Contributor data file. This version code allows more the one version of a Course to be running at one time. A good example would be if a Course was redeveloped and both the old version and new version of the Course had the same CourseCode the CourseVersion would be used to distinguish the two versions of the course. To include an optional Course version add a column of data for each Course titled CourseVersion. Then for each Course record that follows supply a text based version code which can contain anything a college would like to use. If this field is left blank for a Course COMMS will assume there is only one version of this Course.

  • CourseVersion A text based version code up to the maximum length of 50 characters. The combination of CourseCode and CourseVersion must match existing Course Version within your institution.

Example Data Required:

coursecode|courseversion|contributoremail
ARCH1005|2015-2016|alice.green@mycollege.com
ARCH1013|version2|brian.lee@mycollege.com

Deliverable

To integrate your user authorization data into COMMS, you will need to provide the COMMS Administrator with the preceding data sets. Each file should be pipe delimited, and each line of the file should contain a separate entry. The first row in each file must contain the header.

Follow the examples provided in each section.

For manual import, please zip up the files and send them to the COMMS Team, comms@algonquincollege.com

Automation (Optional)

COMMS can be configured to automatically ingest data files. The automated process works as follows:

  • Your organization automates the generation of data files.
  • These files are regularly uploaded to an FTP server.
    • The upload frequency is determined by your organization.
    • For FTP credentials and hosting details, please contact the COMMS Team.
  • COMMS checks the FTP server daily at 6 AM EST and automatically imports any available files.
    • During import, COMMS will:
      • Create new user authorizations,
      • Update existing new user authorizations, and
      • Delete any existing user authorizations entries not included in the latest file.