[ARCHIVED] Merging Student Profile

[ashok_thapa]

We first rolled over Canvas from Google Classroom, we created students manually, registering all students with google email. We had no other measure to have the student enrolled into Canvas course and Canvas- Sentral integration was still on the horizon.

When students come from ERN, they would already have @education email. Since, we have students who are manually entered, what is the implication of the two profiles?

Is it possible we combine the profiles and sync, if so, what implication will be on the completed and submitted school work?

[Steve_Watts · Accepted solution]

Hi  @ashok_thapa ‌
We have a similar situation at my institution. Student user accounts are created in Canvas via SIS import using their central university username. Sometimes we manually create a temporary user account for an individual so they can access Canvas before they have been fully registered with our student records department. Once their registration comes through, this leaves them with two accounts in Canvas and sometimes they've already submitted work with the temporary account that we don't want to lose.
Luckily Canvas has a means of merging two user accounts into one. This is done by someone with system admin access, so if you're not an admin yourself you'll need to ask your local Canvas administrator for help. It might work slightly differently depending on how you have your user accounts, authentication etc configured but with our setup the merge results in one user account that is enrolled on all of the courses that the two original accounts were enrolled on. All grades etc from both accounts are kept. The account has both of the old usernames attached to it so the student can log in with either username and see the same account.
There is a guide for admins here: https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-12630-421473706 

The order in which you do the merge might make a difference: do you merge the old username into the new one or vice versa? So I recommend setting up a few test accounts and trying out a merge to find the process that works best for your situation.

[ashok_thapa]

Hi  @Steve_Watts ‌

Thank you for sharing your experience.

I am aware merging the accounts either via user-merge or CSV upload. As far as test is concerned, canvas test environment does not allow student access and tin he production environment there are students doing live canvas course. So any change here is crucial.

We would want parents, supervisors and students have nice experience working with Canvas rather than learning new tech and finding everything as a surprise.

Cheers,

Ashok

[bneporadny]

Hi Ashok,

Steve provided you with some great information about how to do this and how you could test the merge function without touching your production environment.

While students are unable to access the test environment you can still practice merging the accounts together and review the students profile after the merge to ensure everything go merged as expected. In the past I have had to merge student account in the middle of a term and found that doing so causes no harm to the student and in most cases the student doesn't know anything has happened. 

[ashok_thapa]

Thanks for your input.

Greatly appreciated.