Table of Contents
Overview
What It Means to Be “Integrated”
Entity vs Field
GET vs POST
Bidirectional vs Unidirectional Integrations
Integration Specs
Nightly, Real-Time & Manual Merges
Merge vs Integration
Related Resources
Overview
Coursedog offers best-in-class integrations with many different Student Information Systems (SIS).
This article serves as a high-level overview of these integrations, including:
How they work
What key terms mean
Where you can go to learn more
What It Means to Be “Integrated”
Overview
If Coursedog is “integrated” with your SIS, that means we support the transfer of data between Coursedog and your SIS, ensuring both systems are in sync with each other.
We are integrated with Anthology Student, Ellucian Banner (Direct & Ethos), Ellucian Colleague (Direct & Ethos), Ellucian DegreeWorks, Ellucian PowerCampus, Jenzabar (EX, CX & One), Oracle PeopleSoft, and Workday Student.
We also have solutions for integrating with homegrown SIS systems.
Click the corresponding link above to learn more about that specific integration.
Example Integration Data Flow
Entity vs Field
An "entity" is a major component or object, such as Courses, Programs, Sections, or Instructors.
These entities represent the primary data structures that are managed and manipulated within the platform.
A "field” is a specific piece of data or attribute within an entity.
Fields are the individual data points that make up an entity, such as a course title or instructor name.
Fields can be customized and configured to meet the specific needs of your institution.
GET vs POST
- To “GET” data means to retrieve it from the SIS.
- To “POST” data means to add/update data to your SIS.
Bidirectional vs Unidirectional Integrations
With a “bidirectional” integration, we can GET information from your SIS and POST it back. In other words: Data flows in both directions between Coursedog and your SIS.
If an integration is “unidirectional”, that means data only flows in one direction (“GET-only”).
This generally means data from your SIS is brought into Coursedog but data is not sent back to your SIS.
This is useful when you want Coursedog to display information but aren’t using it as a data entry point.
To determine whether we offer a bidirectional or unidirectional integration with a particular entity or field, check out the “Supported Fields & Objects” section of the Integration Overview for your SIS.
If the “GET SUPPORTED” and “POST SUPPORTED” columns both say “Yes”, then it’s bidirectional.
If the “GET SUPPORTED” column says “Yes” but “POST SUPPORTED” says “No”, then the integration is unidirectional.
Integration Specs
Overview
Integration Specs or “SOTs” (Sources of Truth) are data workbooks we’ve created for each of our SIS integrations that make it easy for you to see:
Which entities are supported in the integration.
Which fields within a given entity are supported in the integration, with their corresponding Coursedog fields.
Whether we can solely GET data from your SIS or also POST data back to it.
Additional information for each field (e.g. suggested default, sample value, etc.).
Field-level POST Support is only “Yes” if the entity-level POSTs are “Supported”.
You can access the specs/SOTs for most integrations via the “Supported Fields & Objects” section of each Integration Overview article.
Examples
Entities
The below integration specs for Entity Support indicate:
Courses and Sections are both bidirectional. In other words: Both GETs and POSTs are supported.
Buildings, Departments, Professors, Programs, Relationships, and Rooms are unidirectional. In other words, only GETs are supported, not posts (“GET-only”).
Fields
Based on the below integration specs, we know this integration supports GETs and POSTs for all of the shown fields.
We can also determine the Coursedog name, SIS database field, and SIS table for each of the fields.
Nightly, Real-Time & Manual Merges
Overview
If a merge is described as “nightly”, that means it happens once a day during off-peak hours.
If a merge is described as happening “in real time” or as a “real-time merge”, that means it happens continuously as changes are made in Coursedog.
Real-time merges are only for entities where POSTs are supported, and only occur when Coursedog needs to send data to the SIS.
See “Additional Information on Real-Time Merges” below for a closer look at how this works.
If you can’t wait for a nightly merge and don’t have real-time merges enabled, you can execute a “manual merge” to force an immediate sync between data.
Note that running a manual merge while users are actively entering data could result in duplicate operations or data loss.
Additional Information on Real-Time Merges
If an entity is unidirectional/GET-only (e.g. Rooms, Buildings, Terms, etc.), then real-time merges are not supported for that entity and those entities will only ever update by nightly merge or manual merge.
If an entity is bidirectional, real-time merges are supported but are only executed when a change is made in Coursedog.
So for example, if a user creates a new section in Scheduling, a real-time merge will execute as soon as the user saves the section in Coursedog.
An example in Curriculum is if an edit course proposal is approved to change the course title; once that proposal is approved, this will trigger a real-time merge to update the course in the SIS.
Coursedog does not support real-time merges to retrieve data from the SIS. Any changes made in the SIS, regardless of whether the entity is unidirectional or bidirectional, will not appear in Coursedog until a nightly or manual merge has been executed.
Merge vs Integration
You will often hear these terms used interchangeably, but technically an “integration” is the broader process of connecting Coursedog with your SIS, whereas a “merge” is the action of syncing the data between Coursedog and your SIS.