Table of Contents
Overview
Adding Users
Inactivating a User
Deleting a User
Managing User Settings
Modifying a User’s Profile
Related Articles
Overview
This article walks you through how to add, edit, manage, and delete users in all Coursedog products.
Adding Users
Overview | Adding Users via CSV Import | Manually on the User Page
Adding Users via API | Adding Users via SSO
Overview
You can add users via CSV import, manually on the user page, by using our APIs, or by setting up User Provisioning with SAML-based SSO.
The method that you use will depend on the information you wish to have in user accounts; and the number of users you’re adding; your comfort level with different methods; and whether or not you use SAML-based SSO.
This section breaks down when to use each method as well as the steps to follow for each.
Adding Users via CSV Import
When to Use It | How to Do It | Historical Uploads | Additional Notes
When to Use It
You can use this for any bulk user additions, whether it’s for your initial product implementation or at any point thereafter when you wish to add or update users in bulk.
How to Do It
Step 1: Navigate to Product > Settings > Users.
Step 2: Click “Import Users”.
Step 3:
You can do one of two things either. Either:
Click “template” to download a blank CSV template to start from scratch.
This route will take you to a Google Sheet.
Download by going to File > Download and then choosing .csv as your file format.
OR Click “data” to download the template with existing user data already included.
Step 4:
Add new users to the template and/or update user details as necessary.
You might want to adjust column width to make it easier to see column headers and the information you’re inputting, just note that the width will not save in CSV format (and CSV format is required for the import)..
“Status” is required; values are either “active” or “inactive”.
You can only input more than one value in the “Products”, “Secondary Departments”, and “Roles” columns.
Separate multiple values with a comma only (no extra space), e.g. “admin,catalog”.
If you need to separate values with something other than a comma, you can do that, but you’ll want to make sure it’s accounted for in Step 10 below.
Values for products include admin, catalog, curriculum, events, scheduling, syllabus, courseDemandProjections, academicOperationsAnalytics, and assessment.
For Departments, use a valid department ID.
For Roles, input the Role ID.
You can determine the Role ID at Product > Settings > Roles > (Hover over role to activate “Role Settings” option) > Role Settings.
If inputting a phone number, it should be a valid, 10-digit number without any special characters, e.g. 5554567890.
Step 5:
Save your CSV to an easy-to-find location on your computer.
Note that your file must be in CSV format – if you save the template in another file format (e.g. XLS), it will not now up in the file select.
Step 6: Return to the “Import Users” modal.
Step 7: Click “File to upload” and select your Users CSV file.
Step 8 (Optional):
Add a description.
The description will come in handy when viewing “Historical Uploads”.
Step 9: Click “Upload File”.
Step 10:
In the “Data Mapping” screen, ensure there is a green checkmark with “Mapped” next to each field.
CSV columns are auto-mapped to the corresponding Coursedog fields based on the CSV column header, but if you have changed it you can adjust the mapping manually at this stage.
If you only want the import tool to import after a certain row in your CSV, you can set that via the “Start at row” setting.
This is useful if you have imported users previously and are simply adding new users.
If, for example, you already have 23 users, your original CSV had 24 columns (including the header). If you’re adding 12 more users, they would be rows 25-36. So, you could set “Start at row” to “25” to skip rows 2-24 and only import rows 25-36.
The import tool automatically assumes values are separated by a comma.
If you’re using commas as part of a value and separating values with something other than a comma, input what you’re using to separate values in the delimiter column(s).
If you wish to not import certain data, click into the "Coursedog Field" column for the applicable data and click "Delete" on your keyboard. This will remove the Coursedog field, and prevent the field from being mapped.
Step 11: Click “Submit”.
Step 12:
Check the “Parsing Details” screen.
If there aren’t any errors (Screenshot 1), click “Import Users” to proceed.
If there are validation errors (Screenshot 2), fix the CSV file and re-import.
Errors will appear at this step if user details cannot be found or mapped in Coursedog, or you add Departments that don't exist.
In the below example, “department codes” were used in the imported CSV, but as mentioned above, these should have been department id.
Step 13:
Check the “Summary” screen for errors.
If there are errors, contact Coursedog support; be sure to include the identifier.
If there aren’t any errors, congratulations! Your import was completed successfully.
Click “Done” to exit out of the modal.
Refresh the page to see changes reflected.
Historical Uploads
You can view past user imports by clicking “Historical Uploads”.
This will show you a list of all past uploads, which you can organize in ascending or descending order by using the up and down arrows.
Click “Summary” to see the Results and Import Summary of that upload.
Click “Download” to view the corresponding JSON file.
Additional Notes
If the CSV file is exported from Coursedog, changed and imported again without changes to the email address – which is used as a unique ID in Coursedog – then the users will be updated.
If, however, the email address is changed or no email address is provided, new users will be created.
If a user email ends with @coursedog.com or @example.com, it will not be parsed.
This is so we can avoid side effects of creating or updating a user that is attached to multiple schools.
Users cannot be deleted via the CSV import – only added, updated, or deactivated.
If you remove a user from a CSV, and then conduct a new import, they will not be removed.
Similarly, if you have users already added to your UI and use the template to create new ones, we would merge the existing users with the new ones.
This is to ensure no users are accidentally deleted.
Manually on the User Page
PATH: Any Coursedog Product > Settings > Users
When to Use It
Use this when you just need to add or update a handful of users.
How to Do It
Step 1: Select “+ Add User” at the top of the page to open the “Add New User” card.
Step 2:
Provide information about your new user, including the role they were assigned.
Required fields are marked with a red "required" symbol in their label next to the field name.
Email address is one of the required fields; it is a user’s unique ID in Coursedog and, consequently, cannot be edited after the user is created (See “Modifying a User’s Profile” below to learn more). Additionally, if a user is also an Instructor in Scheduling, their user email must match the email in their Instructor Profile in order for them to be able to use the Instructor Dashboard.
Although not required to start, you will want to assign a role to each user before they begin working in Coursedog; this is an extremely important step, as the assigned role determines the user's permissions and access to the various functionalities within Coursedog (see this article for more information on roles).
Optional fields are:
- Title –
- Manually type in the title for this user.
- This will be used in Curriculum for Proposal Logs.
Roles –
Which role(s) you should assign depends on how many products your user has access to (and their permission-level for each).
If a user is assigned multiple roles, they will have the higher (least restrictive) permission in all associated products. In other words, if the permission says “Allow” on one assigned role but “Deny” in the other, they will have “allow” access.
See the below chart for guidance.
- Title –
Primary Department – You may assign only one.
Secondary Departments – You may assign more than one.
Products – If your institution has more than one Coursedog product.
Default Product — If a user has access to more than one product and a default is not assigned, when they first log in they will be taken to a dashboard where they can choose the product they wish to use. However, if a default product has been assigned, upon login they will always be taken to the homepage for that product.
Phone Number
Address – Including street address, city, state, and zip code.
Institution ID – This points to your institution’s ID for this user. Whether or not you need to include this depends on your SSO configuration. If your SSO is configured to send the ID of your users as configured in your database, make sure their institution ID is captured here so we can match them with our database.
Status – Choose between “Active” and “Inactive”. Inactivating a user will prevent them from being able to log into Coursedog but will allow you to retain a record for them.
Login Method – Choose between “Password” and “Default”. The default is defined by an Admin at Admin > Settings > Auth Settings.
Step 3: How you proceed next depends on whether or not you want the new user to receive an email notification alerting them that access has been created and a password reset is required.
If You Want an Email to be Sent: Select “ADD NEW USER”.
If You DO NOT Want an Email to be Sent: Select “ADD WITHOUT SENDING MAIL”.
Adding Users via API
When to Use It
If you need to add users in bulk post-launch and you’re comfortable using APIs, you can do so via our API.
How to Do It
See our "Uploading Users in Bulk via API" article.
Adding Users via SSO
When to Use It
SAML schools can use SSO Dynamic User Provisioning to automatically create users with product, role, and department assignments.
How to Do It
Follow the steps outlined here and see related FAQs.
Inactivating a User
PATH: Any Coursedog Product > Settings > Users > (Select User)
Overview
If you wish to inactivate a user from the system but would like to retain their full record, you can change their status from “active” to “inactive” within their User Profile.
This compares to deleting a user, which removes their record (though you can still see a history of changes they made via the User Activity log in the Admin Dashboard).
Best Practices
If you wish to retain the user’s full record, do not delete the user; instead, change their status to “inactive”.
Remove inactive users from all workflows and replace them with a new user.
Emails will be sent to inactive users in workflows until they are removed/replaced.
Remove all roles from the user’s account (this will ensure they show up in the “Inactive Workflow Users” report available in Curriculum).
Deleting a User
PATH: Any Coursedog Product > Settings > Users
When you delete a user, the only record of them that will remain is via the User Activity log, where you can see their past activity.
If you wish to retain their full record, see “Inactivating a User” above.
You may delete a user from Coursedog by selecting their name from the list and clicking “Delete User” on the top right.
When a user is deleted from the system, their name will be removed from the workflow itself as well as any existing requests. Make sure you formally remove the deleted participant; replace them with a new user in all their workflows; and select “Update workflows for in-flight proposals” to prevent any issues.
Managing User Settings
Roles
Primary Academic Department / Secondary Academic Departments
Products
Within the settings of an individual user, there are a few important fields you can use to manage what your user can do within the Coursedog platform.
Roles
As discussed above, what you select here will determine what the user can and cannot see/do throughout the product.
Primary Academic Department / Secondary Academic Departments
These fields allow you to select which departments a user has access to. This is important for a case like Department Schedulers where you only want them to have access to a specific department.
You may only select one Primary Academic Department, but may select multiple Secondary Academic Departments.
You should avoid assigning the same department as primary AND secondary (if you assign the same department for both, the user will appear twice in the list of schedulers).
- So long as a department is assigned to a user, it doesn’t matter if it’s listed as primary or secondary.
In other words: There’s no downstream impact if a department is listed as primary or secondary.
ALLOW IF permissions will apply to all departments assigned to a user regardless of primary vs. secondary.
Products
This field allows you to select what products a user has access to.
This overrides the institution-level access but cannot grant access to a product the school does not have. For example, if an institution has both Academic Scheduling and Event Scheduling, you can use this field to limit a user to only accessing the Academic Scheduling platform.
If your institution has multiple products but you want a user to only have access to one, you will want to make sure you assign that product in their profile to prevent the user from accessing other products.
Modifying a User’s Profile
Overview
Most of a user’s profile can be modified at any time by going to Product > Settings > Users > (Click User’s Name).
Email Address
A user’s email address cannot be changed; if a user’s email needs to be changed, then the user’s existing account must be deleted and a new account must be created.
If the user’s original account is tied to any workflows – and that account is deleted and a new one created with a different email address – you will need to update those workflows with the “new” user account.