Table of Contents
Overview
TBA Meeting Time Doesn't POST to SIS
Charge Assessment Method Cannot be Changed on a PUT Request
User Does Not have Permission to Delete Instructional-Events
Room Has Capacity of #, Section Has Capacity of #
Section Cannot be Added Due to Course Status
Only One Primary Instructor per Section
Section Record is Locked and Prevents Updates
No Coursedog or SIS Data Found
Related Articles
Overview
Student Information System (SIS) platforms have certain requirements that must be met in order for data to be accepted during a merge. If those requirements are not met, a merge error can occur.
This article captures common merge errors for Colleague Ethos.
Many errors can be prevented by creating a rule in Coursedog; learn more about rules here.
For a look at additional integration errors that can occur regardless of SIS, go here.
For a general overview of managing merge errors, go here.
If you are unable to resolve a merge error by following the directions noted below and you aren’t yet live, reach out to your Project Manager. If you are fully implemented, open a support ticket (and alert your Customer Success Manager as well).
TBA Meeting Time Doesn't POST to SIS
Name of Error in Merge Report
You won’t see a merge error for this. However, assigning a “TBA Meeting” will result in no meeting time or rooms posting to your SIS.
Explanation
Assigning “TBA” as a meeting time will result in Coursedog not POSTing any days or rooms to Colleague Ethos.
Rooms won’t post because room assignments happen within the meeting time; so if there’s no meeting time to post, it won’t post the room either.
The instructor assignment also fails because they need to be assigned to a Meeting Time for the POST to work.
Best Practice / How to Resolve
When a section needs to have a meeting assigned, but the days and times are either unknown or should not be specified, you should assign a standard meeting pattern that captures a “No Days, No Times” scenario.
Learn how to set it up here.
Long-Term Fix
In addition to following the best practice outlined above, you can also hide the “Select TBA” option to prevent users from selecting it.
Go here for instructions on how to do that.
Charge Assessment Method Cannot be Changed on a PUT Request
Name of Error in Merge Report
{ "status": "Fail", "response": "400:The charge assessment method cannot be changed on a PUT request. Parameter name: chargeAssessmentMethod.id:api/sections/1b8c55f4-cbc7-49c2-b635-d93ee8ff222b" }
Explanation
Ethos refers to Billing Method value as “Charge Assessment Method”. It can only be set on section creation. It cannot be updated or modified through the APIs after a section is integrated into Colleague.
How to Resolve
Update the billing method value for the desired section directly in Colleague.
Long-Term Fix
Add a rule to detect billing method changes when Ethos ID is present in the section and warn users that the change should be executed in Colleague.
User Does Not have Permission to Delete Instructional-Events
Name of Error in Merge Report
"400:User '0854845' does not have permission to delete instructional-events.:api/instructional-events/0d4d0815-2bf0-42c9-939c-7181f70faffd"
Explanation
This error highlights that the integration user lacks the necessary permissions in Colleague to remove meeting times.
The Ethos integration authenticates the user against Colleague, and the user must be granted a set of permissions in order to perform updates relating to meeting times in Coursedog.
An update to Ethos defined a separate permission for deletion of instructional-events, also known as meeting times, through the integration.
How to Resolve
Contact the member(s) of your institution’s IT team that manage Colleague and the Ethos integration.
Ask them to review the permissions for the integration user and ensure it includes: DELETE.INSTRUCTIONAL.EVENT
Room Has Capacity of #, Section <guid> Has Capacity of #
Name of Error in Merge Report
“400:Room HYBD*. has capacity of 0; section EID-271-01-1 has capacity of 12:api/instructional-events?offset=0"
Explanation
The Ethos platform enforces certain business rules and checks in addition to Colleague functionality. When assigning a room to a section, Ethos ensures that the room’s capacity is equal to or greater than the section capacity. If a room assignment violates this constraint, Ethos will return an error.
This happens most often for online or virtual spaces that are created in Colleague with a capacity of 0.
How to Resolve
To prevent the error in the short-term, your institution should increase the capacity of those rooms in Colleague to encompass their largest virtual or digital offering.
Long-Term Fix
We recommend setting up a section rule in Coursedog that will generate a warning anytime someone assigns a room with lower capacity to the section – or possibly prevent them from being able to do so altogether by making this a required rule.
Section Cannot be Added Due to Course Status
Name of Error in Merge Report
“400:Section cannot be added because the course has a terminated status”
Explanation
The Colleague Ethos integration returns course status as Active, Inactive, and sometimes Terminated. The Coursedog platform relies on attribute mappings in order to properly capture this information. If no mappings are defined, all course statuses will be set to “Active” in Coursedog. This can cause confusion when a scheduler attempts to create a section of a course in Coursedog that has been cancelled or terminated in Colleague. This will result in a merge error.
How to Resolve
Work with Coursedog to define the proper Status attribute mappings for the Courses merge to capture all course statuses in use (e.g. Active = Active), this will help the integration read and set the proper value.
Only One Primary Instructor per Section
Name of Error in Merge Report
Coursedog will return: "\"postBody\" failed custom validation because Exactly one faculty must be assigned primary role",
Ethos will not generate an error, but it will strip any previous records of primary status and leave only one with the role.
Explanation
The Colleague Ethos integration supports multiple instructor assignments per section but only one of those assignments can be designated as primary.
When this error occurs, secondary instructor assignments must be provided with the role of “Non-Primary”. This role must be mapped to a space or blank string in the admin panel (Ethos only accepts “primary” or “” as roles for instructor assignments).
How to Resolve
Select one of the instructor assignments to be primary, update all others with a secondary/non-primary role.
Long-Term Fix
We recommend enabling or setting up a section rule in Coursedog that will flag, and likely prevent, assigning more than one instructor with the primary role.
Section Record is Locked and Prevents Updates
Name of Error in Merge Report
"400:Course Sections ID '202198' is locked.:api/sections/dac7710a-7d23-4e5d-baa8-62d0d6e3feb8"
Explanation
Colleague allows one set of inputs to modify sections at a time. If a record is opened via the SECT, SOFF, FASC screens, it will be “locked”, thereby preventing all other users – including the Ethos integration – from performing any updates.
How to Resolve
Wait for the Coursedog merge to complete before reviewing changes in Colleague.
Wait and try again.
Communicate with users in Colleague and ensure they close/save records if the issue persists.
No Coursedog or SIS Data Found
Name of Error in Merge Report
No Coursedog or SIS data found
Explanation
This message indicates there is no data in the SIS to retrieve for a given term. That said, the reason for there not being any data to retrieve depends on whether or not data is expected (See “How to Resolve” below).
How to Resolve
Check to see if there truly isn’t any data to retrieve for the given term. If that is the case, then data isn’t expected, and you can either ignore the error or resolve it in your SIS.
If data IS expected, then you should reach out to Coursedog support as it is likely one of the following:
There was a connection error, and the merge failed to retrieve data from the SIS.
There was a failure in transformation or processing in the partner integration layer (i.e. N2N) that led to the merge not receiving any data from the SIS.