SIS ID Already in use message

[ray_senesac]

We have an issue in which a we cannot push out a course shell to a teacher because Canvas gives us a message that tthe SIS ID is already assigned.  The teacher had an account that was manually created, but has since been deleted; and the SIS ID is not assigned to anyone else in the system. How do we manage the Canvas system so it allows the assignment of the SIS ID within  Canvas?

[nr2522 · Accepted solution]

Hi,  @ray_senesac ‌.

Many items (including users and courses) are not physically deleted in Canvas. They are merely logically deleted, still existing in the database but hidden from the UI.

My recommendation is to upload a SIS Import CSV file using the "change_sis_id.csv" format shown here: SIS Import Format Documentation - Canvas LMS REST API Documentation. The old_id should be the one that you wish to reuse. For the new_id I suggest using the old one with an extra character that wouldn't appear in an actual id. I typically add an underscore at the end. After you upload, you should be able to use the old id as if it had never been used before.

(Before they introduced this CSV format, we had to reactive the old id with the object type's respective CSV format, edit it in the UI, and then delete it again.)

Best,

Nelson

[kona]

 @ray_senesac , I'm not sure of the answer to your question, but I've shared this with the Canvas Developers‌ group in the Community to see if they can help!

Kona

[nr2522 · Accepted solution]

Hi,  @ray_senesac ‌.

Many items (including users and courses) are not physically deleted in Canvas. They are merely logically deleted, still existing in the database but hidden from the UI.

My recommendation is to upload a SIS Import CSV file using the "change_sis_id.csv" format shown here: SIS Import Format Documentation - Canvas LMS REST API Documentation. The old_id should be the one that you wish to reuse. For the new_id I suggest using the old one with an extra character that wouldn't appear in an actual id. I typically add an underscore at the end. After you upload, you should be able to use the old id as if it had never been used before.

(Before they introduced this CSV format, we had to reactive the old id with the object type's respective CSV format, edit it in the UI, and then delete it again.)

Best,

Nelson

[Steve_Watts]

 @nr2522 , thank you so much for sharing this! I often have trouble with SIS IDs from "ghost" objects in Canvas . I didn't realise I could fix the problem with something as simple as a CSV import.

[reid_bauer]

nr2522-

Thanks, this totally helped me out today! I couldn't figure out what was going on with this user SIS ID. 

[MehrdadOrdoukha]

Thank you for your post. I spent a day looking for the answer. I now like to know if there is a way to get all the ghost accounts ?

Thanks

[JamesSekcienski]

I hope you found a solution to find the "ghost" accounts.  In case you haven't or others may also be looking for this information too, you can run a user provisioning report or a user SIS export report and check the option to include deleted objects.  When the report is finished, you can filter the results to just look at the deleted ones and these would be the "ghost" accounts/logins.

[AbdulKhadar]

Thank you very much for all the helpful tips. As we didn't know about the ghost's presence, we were not that scared. But the situation is rather precarious to live with them. Can we find out a Pied Piper of Hamelin to get rid of all the ghosts from the account?Any solution at hand to keep the account free of those deleted SIS IDs?

[JamesSekcienski · Accepted solution]

To prevent it, you would need to make sure that before a user is deleted or a login is deleted the SIS ID is removed.  We do this with our blueprint courses since we manually set these and sometimes delete them to replace them with a new version. 

This is still prone to user error/oversight, but being aware of this and building into any processes that result in user and/or login deletions will help reduce the likelihood of the issue in the future.  You might be able to do a theme modification to hide the delete options when a user has an SIS ID, but that wouldn't prevent deletes by API (if the user has permission) or SIS Import.

If anyone else has any suggestions for how they handle it differently, I would be interested in knowing too.

[AbdulKhadar]

Thank you, sir. As you see, many people like me found this reply quite helpful. Now I understand why we are not able to add the deleted users back to the course. Hope Canvas will come out with a solution to show us how to delete all the data from the backend.

I had deleted the user to try with another email, and now I entered it again with an underscore at the end. But can we remove the underscore from the SIS ID?Because I have created a uniform SIS ID for all the users.

Thank you!

Abdul

[ray_senesac]

Thanks for the immmediate and positive outreach!  Our tech worked with our Canvas rep and they recitifid the issue. Thanks again!

[JustinBrooksby]

Thanks  @nr2522 ‌. Just used this advice today. Strange thing is that today I have had two cases where logins are completely deleted. The account profile is still there but no login information. I have to recreate the login but modify the old ghosted account using the SIS method you mentioned.