Table of Contents
Overview
Merge Error Types
Best Practices
Ways to Review Merge Errors
Troubleshooting Errors
Related Articles
Overview
This article captures an overview of merge error types; merge error best practices; as well as ways to receive, view, and resolve integration errors.
Merge Error Types
Unique to SIS | Shared Across Multiple SISs | General Integration Failure
There are a few different categories of merge errors. They can be specific to your SIS; issues shared across multiple SISs; and general integration failures.
Unique to SIS
These are documented, by each available SIS, here. These guides can be downloaded and printed for your convenience.
Shared Across Multiple SISs
Some of the more common issues are noted here.
General Integration Failure
These are different from merge errors caused by the specific data or contents of a merge.
Network, infrastructure, system, load, and several other external factors can cause instability and integration failures.
Persistent integration difficulties should be discussed with your Coursedog Customer Success Manager, Coursedog Support, your integration provider, and your internal IT infrastructure team.
Best Practices
Prevention
As you work through merge error resolution, identify any trends or common issues/mistakes being made.
Fortify your instance to prevent the merge errors in the future. You can do this by:
Creating Section Rules that will prevent section submission with error-causing issues. Learn more here.
Updating your Section Template to provide better guidance and enforce SIS requirements with end users.
Use Extended descriptions (guidance, examples, lists, links).
Use “required,” “editable,” etc. settings to enforce.
Define “minimum”, “maximum”, and “not allowed” characters.
Use defaults (default from Course or Term).
Learn more about configuring templates here.
Resolution
Monitor your merge error reports regularly (after nightly syncs or once a week during active scheduling) to catch and resolve these issues. Learn more about merge reports here.
Admins and Super Admins should also have the "View Section Integration Status" permission enabled (under Roles) in order to take advantage of viewing the Integration Errors report in the Reporting console.
If your institution is operating with real-time or nightly merges:
Admins should manage and resolve merge errors as regularly as possible during active scheduling phases.
Pull merge reports daily or weekly and resolve all merge errors as they come in.
When the scheduling phase is complete, ensure you have allowed at least 1-3 weeks between the scheduling phase end and the necessary/target date for final posting to the SIS to allow for resolution of any final merge errors.
If your institution is operating with manual merges:
Execute manual merges regularly and resolve errors throughout the active cycle and allow 2-3 weeks between final schedule submission and final posting to SIS for merge error resolution.
You will need to merge the schedule, pull the merge error report, resolve all, and then merge again.
Ways to Review Merge Errors
Overview | SIS Sync Tool | Merge Notification Emails | Integration Errors Report
Admin Dashboard Merge Report | Section
Overview
You can review errors in four different places:
SIS Sync Tool
Merge Notification Emails
Integration Errors reports
Admin Dashboard Merge Report
Section Editor
SIS Sync Tool
You can learn more about this tool here.
Merge Notification Emails
PATH: Admin > Merge Notifications
Overview
In order to receive merge notifications, you will need to sign up via the “Merge Notifications” page located within the Admin dashboard.
At least one user at your institution should sign up to receive notifications daily.
How to Do It
Click “+ User”.
Type in the email address of the user who should receive merge notifications.
In the “notification setting” dropdown, select how frequently you would like to receive notifications: “send daily” (i.e. An email will be sent nightly after the automated synchronization executes) or “send if issue” (i.e. An email will only be sent when synchronization issues are encountered).
Sample Emails
Once you are set to receive merge notifications, you will receive emails from Coursedog with details regarding the synchronization.
Email Indicating a Successful Nightly Merge
Emails Indicating Merge Errors
The two emails below capture four sets of merge errors:
2 out of 21 nightly merges did not succeed.
8 out of 35 realtime merges did not succeed.
1 of the 14 nightly merge errors was due to a fatal error persisting SIS and Coursedog data. Learn more here.
13 of the 14 nightly merge errors were due to being unable to fetch data from the SIS. Learn more here.
Email Attachment
Although the body of the email will summarize your report, it will also include a multi-page PDF attachment with additional information and direct links to Coursedog for more details concerning each merge.
Integration Errors Report
PATH: Academic Scheduling > Reports > Integration Errors
The Reports Dashboard in Academic Scheduling includes a tab for Integration Errors.
The Integration Errors report will display a list of all sections that encountered an error during the last integration. Each row is clickable, so users can open up the section editor directly.
Admin Dashboard Merge Report
PATH: Admin > Merge Report
Overview
After each nightly sync, Coursedog automatically produces a merge report, which can be found in the merge dashboard in the admin panel (it is likely that only a few users will have access to this, specifically admins and IT).
Integration Dashboard
For each merge, you can click on "View Report Details", which takes you to the Integration Dashboard.
The merge dashboard shows the status of each step of the integration, along with all errors that occurred that prevented the merge from completing successfully.
Most errors will occur during the “POST Updates to SIS” phase, and the report will detail the exact error response that your SIS provides to us to help IT folks understand why the SIS is rejecting Coursedog’s update requests.
Section Editor
Sections displayed in the Section Editor will show a "red" error icon if that section has experienced an integration error during the last merge.
If a section has both a conflict and an integration error, the section row will only display the icon for the integration error (as there is only space for one icon). This icon is only visible to users who have the View Section Integration Status permission.
Troubleshooting Errors
Go here for merge error FAQs and troubleshooting as well as links to all SIS-specific merge error guides.