Configuration Options: Provisioning and Synchronizing User Data

Configuration Options: Provisioning and Synchronizing User Data

Synopsis

User accounts are created in Concourse so that individuals at your institution are able to access Concourse and engage with the appropriate permissions. User accounts must be created before individuals can edit or view syllabi in Concourse. To create a user account, Concourse must receive the user’s email address and username. This information can be transferred to Concourse in a variety of ways. Your institution can choose to Auto-create Users, create users with a User Feed, or create users manually (for exceptional cases). Continue reading for more information to help you choose the right option for your institution.

Key Terms

  1. Feed: a data file that is used to migrate information from external systems to Concourse; feeds can be automated or processed manually.
  2. Integration: the way in which Concourse is connected to your institution’s LMS or SSO.
  3. Auto-create: an optional component included in LMS integration that creates Concourse user accounts, registrations, and courses automatically with data from the LMS.
  4. Middleware: a tool that translates data in your institution’s systems to a format that Concourse can consume. Concourse’s middleware partner is Apidapter.
  5. Registration: the act of adding a user to a course and providing them with the appropriate group permissions based on their role in the course.
  6. Group Permissions: a setting that determines how each of seven user groups engages with each syllabus item; group permissions function at the syllabus level but can be set in a number of ways.
  7. End users: typically students, instructors, and other syllabus managers. End users typically engage with syllabi individually and do not need large-scale access to system data for management or reporting purposes.

Important to this Decision

Before making decisions about how your institution uses Concourse, you should consider how stakeholders, systems, timelines, and other factors are impacted. Review the important elements below to be better prepared to make changes to your Concourse configuration or implementation.
Key Players
Prior to making this decision, you should consult your institution’s SIS, LMS, and SSO admins, as well as IT staff involved with data management.
Consideration
User accounts are required in Concourse to register users to syllabi, allow syllabus editing, and track student views. How data is provisioned into Concourse to create accounts and match users with existing accounts should be the way that will result in the most consistent, accurate data transfer between your institution’s systems and Concourse.
Timing
This decision is typically made during the implementation phase, but user creation and synchronization can be changed afterward if your institution’s needs change.
Connected Systems & Locations
  1. If your institution Auto-creates Users:
    1. A component is added to your middleware adapter to trigger the automatic creation and updation (optional) of users.
    2. Your LMS sends user data (email address and user ID) and LMS course role data to Apidapter, where it is prepared for transmission to Concourse.
  2. If your institution processes User Feeds:
    1. Data is queried from the SIS to generate User Feeds. Many system admins use SQL to collect the data and generate feed files.
    2. Feeds can be processed manually by uploading a correctly-formatted .txt file to Concourse; feeds can also be automated with the use of tools like PowerShell.
    3. Users managed via feed can access Concourse either through the SSO portal or LMS.
  3. If your institution creates users manually, the System Admin determines how those limited users access Concourse.
Method
  1. To Auto-Create Users, submit a request to support@campusconcourse.com to add Auto-create user components to your middleware adapter. 
  2. User Feeds can be automated or processed manually. To learn more about automated feeds, see our knowledge base article on Automated Feed Processing. User feeds can be generated manually using the data guidelines in Construct and Process System Data Feeds. To manually process a User Feed: 
    1. Admin > Tools 
    2. Feed Processing 
    3. Select User in the Type dropdown menu 
    4. Select File > Select the feed file from your device
    5. Process
  3. To manually create users one at a time:
    1. Admin > Tools
    2. Select Manually add one user at a time
    3. Enter the user’s email address and select Add
    4. Search for and access the new user account
    5. Select Edit in the Settings block
    6. Enter the user’s external ID
    7. Uncheck Disabled for the account
    8. Save
Motivation & Impact
Choose the method that best supports your other systems, processes, and staff. Some options for user provisioning will be more efficient than others, and some may not be feasible given your institutional contexts. For example, institutions that do not use an LMS are not able to Auto-create users via an LTI integration and should therefore process User Feeds. Likewise, institutions that have small, overburdened IT teams may not be able to manage additional feed processing, so Auto-create is likely the better option.

Configuration Options

Concourse provides different options for creating users to support different institutional contexts. We recommend that you review these options carefully before deciding which one best meets your needs. 
  1. Option A: Auto-create Users
  2. Option B: Process User Feeds
  3. Option C: Manually Create Users
For the purposes of creating and synchronizing large amounts of user data, either auto-creating users or creating users via feed is the best option for quickly and accurately creating accounts that match user data in your other systems. It is not recommended to use both Auto-Create and User Feeds because it results in redundant effort and can lead to duplicated Concourse accounts (or access errors) if a discrepancy exists in user data across multiple sources. If the choices below don’t fit your needs, reach out to Client Services for assistance.
Option A: Auto-create Users
  1. Approach: Submit a request to your implementation team or support@campusconcourse.com to add auto-create user components to the  middleware adapter for your LMS integration. A conversation will follow to confirm your institution’s use case and other related configuration settings, and then Team Concourse will meet with you to set up and test the additions to your adapter. 
  2. Better For: This option is by far the most popular among Concourse institutions. It is used by institutions where end users will access Concourse primarily via the LMS. Larger institutions also typically use this option because it eliminates the need to generate and process lengthy User Feeds at frequent intervals.
  3. Advantages and Disadvantages of Auto-create: The main advantage of this approach is how low maintenance it is. Setup meetings to update your middleware adapter typically take less than an hour, and once the initial setup is complete, there is no intervention required from Concourse Admins or members of your IT team. User accounts are thereafter automatically created in Concourse using data from your LMS. A disadvantage of this approach is that if users have more than one account in your LMS with different user data for each (e.g., instructor vs. admin roles) or if user data is changed in your LMS but not in Concourse, then there could be data mismatches that result in user access issues. For example, if a user’s data changes in your LMS due to a name change, then they might receive an error when attempting to open Concourse while logged into the LMS. These errors are fairly straightforward to address on the individual account level and don’t require any significant changes to your setup.
  4. Effort: This option is the least time consuming. LMS integration requires an initial set-up meeting with a member of Team Concourse, your institution’s Concourse Admin, and your LMS Admin; the Auto-create components are typically added to your middleware adapter at this point. If you wish to enable user auto-creation after your LMS integration is complete, you can send an email to support@campusconcourse.com to make the request; a meeting is recommended at this point to ensure you’re ready to make the switch. Once these components are added to your middleware adapter, no additional maintenance or intervention are required on your institution’s part.
Option B: Process User Feeds
  1. Approach: For automated feed processing, a member of your institution’s IT staff writes a generation script (SQL is often used for this purpose) to create User Feed files from user data in your Student Information System; the User Feed is then transmitted to Concourse via POST over HTTPS. Once feeds are confirmed to create users as expected, this process can be automated with PowerShell or other job scheduling software. Feed files can be created manually, but this approach opens up the possibility of errors in data being fed into Concourse, which could result in system data errors later. If your institution generates feed files automatically, those files can be manually processed in Concourse at a cadence that fits your needs. Once users have been created in Concourse, they can access the system via your institution’s predetermined access points, be matched with their accounts, and experience Concourse in the appropriate role. Note that if your institution runs User Feeds, Registration Feeds may also be required to add users to courses in the correct group.
  2. Better For: This option is used most often by institutions that do not use an LMS, have users access Concourse via an SSO portal, or have users access Concourse directly. Smaller institutions may also decide to use this option to control the user data that is required to access Concourse (e.g., setting an institutional email address rather than a personal address).
  3. Advantages and Disadvantages of User Feeds: Automated User Feeds require little long-term maintenance and intervention after the initial setup and troubleshooting period; however, if feeds are not processed in the correct sequence or at the correct frequency, there may be errors or delays between account creation and users being able to access their syllabi as expected. 
  4. Effort: Processing User Feeds requires more time investment than auto-creating users, but it is typically not a very time-consuming task once the initial set-up is complete. We recommend that feed files be generated and processed manually at first to ensure accuracy of data.
Option C: Manually Create Users
  1. Approach: Concourse System Administrators are the only users who are able to create accounts manually for other users. A System Admin can create a Concourse account and then make adjustments to account settings, such as the account’s status (e.g., enabled or disabled), authentication type, and profile information. In addition to creating exceptional accounts on an as-needed basis, this manual creation ability is helpful if accounts created via User Feed or Auto-create are later found to contain errors and must be resolved to provide the user access. Manually created accounts can be set to access Concourse either via the LMS or SSO (external authentication) or directly from the Concourse login screen (internal authentication). 
  2. Better For: This option is typically used only for exceptional cases at a variety of institutions, when a limited number of high-level user accounts must be created, and creating the user via Auto-create or User Feed it is not feasible. 
  3. Advantages and Disadvantages of Manually Creating Users: Creating accounts manually is not so time-consuming as to be prohibitive for creating accounts for users who don’t typically use the LMS. For example, if the Provost needs a Concourse account to review reports, it could be more efficient to create their Concourse account manually than to acclimate them to accessing Concourse via the LMS (if they even have an LMS account). On the other hand, System Admins who create user accounts must be very careful that the email address and external ID they enter for the user matches the data that exists in other systems to avoid data mismatch errors. Any data mismatches will prevent the user from accessing Concourse.
  4. Effort: The time investment for manually creating users depends on the number of users you are planning to create. Since user accounts are created one at a time, you can plan to append approximately one to two minutes per user to create an account and adjust settings to provide access. While it is not arduous to manually create a few accounts manually, trying to create dozens or hundreds of user accounts manually is far too time consuming to be effective. 

Post-Decision Changes

Your institution’s needs may change over time and you may need to make changes to your configuration settings. In other words, the configuration decisions you make during the implementation phase might not be as efficient five or ten years afterward. Review the guidance below to better understand how changing this particular decision may affect your Concourse system or deployment in the future.
Disabling Auto-create Functionality to Switch to User Feeds
If your institution initially provisions users via Auto-create and later decides to switch to processing User Feeds, you will need to:
  1. Review the format of user data within your system so that User Feeds can be formatted appropriately.
  2. Reach out to Concourse for guidance on whether Registration Feeds also need to be used to provision user roles/groups appropriately.
  3. Work with a member of your IT staff to implement feed generation and processing (automated if possible), including formatting and sequencing of feeds.
  4. Contact Concourse to request the Auto-create User component be removed from your middleware adapter. In some cases, leaving the Auto-create component enabled while running user feeds can lead to errors in your system data or user access. At this time, also request that your sandbox be refreshed.
  5. Test all new feeds in your sandbox prior to processing feeds in the production environment. Once you have confirmed that accounts are being created as expected in the sandbox, process the feeds in your production environment.
  6. Communicate with new users if a delay can be expected in the creation of their Concourse account and what to do if they receive an error in Concourse that their account has not been created yet.
Discontinuing User Feeds to Enable Auto-create Functionality
If your institution initially provisions users via User Feed and later decides to switch to Auto-create users, you will need to:
  1. Reach out to Concourse to request that the Auto-create users component be added to your middleware adapter. Confirm whether the Auto-create registration component should be included as well. 
  2. Meet with Concourse (strongly encouraged) to test that users are being created automatically as expected.
  3. Reach out to your IT staff to request that User Feeds be discontinued.
  4. If your institution uses both LMS and SSO integrations, inform new users that they must access Concourse from the LMS at first to create their accounts before attempting to access Concourse via the SSO portal. New users who first attempt to access Concourse via the SSO portal will receive an error.

Related Topics

Before making a decision about provisioning and synchronizing user data, you should be familiar with some related issues and contexts. See the following articles for more information:
  1. Learn more about constructing User Feeds and Registration Feeds in Construct and Process System Data Feeds.
  2. Learn more about user management in Concourse.

Tell Us About Your Experience

Did this article answer your question? If you made a decision like this for your Concourse instance, let us know how it turned out. If we missed something in this article or if you have a question that isn’t addressed in our Knowledge Base, let us know how we can help by reaching out to support@campusconcourse.com. 

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