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Canvas (PeopleSoft) - Changing PeopleSoft Data after Course or Section Created in Canvas
Registrar staff, PeopleSoft administrators, and Canvas institutional administrators at University of Wisconsin System (UWS) institutions should be careful about changing Student Information System (SIS) data for instructional timetable courses in PeopleSoft after those courses have been created in Canvas. Changing the wrong data may result in missing Canvas enrollments, courses becoming unpublished, or missing course content.
The SIS ID
When an instructional timetable course and its accompanying section(s) are first created in Canvas through the Student Information System (SIS) integration, Canvas uses the SIS ID as a unique identifier for the course and section. The SIS ID Explained explains the components of a common SIS ID:SIS ID: 009390-01-2201-1-01-01618
009390 - Course IDThe unique course ID value that is generate by PeopleSoft when a course is added.01 - Course Offering NumberPeopleSoft generates the course offering number and uses it for sequencing.2201 - TermThe identifier that corresponds to the term the course is associated with - such as Spring 2020.1 - SessionThe identifier that corresponds to length of time the class is held. For example, courses may be held for the full semester, or the first half and second half, and so on.01 - Section NumberThe identifier for the section number that corresponds to the course. For Example, if the course was English 101 Section 01 - the "01" would be the section number.1618 - Class NumberThe student facing identifier that is unique to the term. This is generally the value students can use to easily find courses for registration purposes.
Impact
If the values of any of the components of a course or section SIS ID (above) are changed in the SIS after the course and section have been created in Canvas, the integration will create a new combination of course and section and move the student and instructor enrollments into the new section.
The result of this is that the students and instructors will be moved into a new, blank Canvas course shell, while any student or instructor content (readings, assignments, student work, grades, etc) will be left behind in the old course shell.
If the course (or any of its sections) are cross-listed, this may break the cross-listing.
Changing some of the above information could also cause a course to fall "out of scope" for the PeopleSoft integration, causing it to not be included in the integration at all. See the Courses not appearing in Canvas if not "in Scope" in PeopleSoft guide for more information.
Solutions
If any of the above happens, the Canvas institution administrator has three options for fixing the issues:
- enroll the instructor in the old course so they can copy their content over to the new course
- cross list the new section into the old course to allow the instructor and students to see all of their content and activity
- undo the changes in the Student Information System and wait for the integration to run again.