Blueprint pitfalls

cdeville
Community Participant

I wanted to share unexpected pitfalls I've found while working with Blueprints. My main example is using the blueprint_course_id field. Let's say you already have 100 courses associated with Blueprint_A. Next, you upload one new course using an SIS import csv like the one below.

course_id,short_name,long_name,status,term_id,account_id,blueprint_course_id
COURSE_101,SPRING 2018 1550,Special Topics on Vibranium,active,2181,CLAS,BLUEPRINT_A

You'd expect COURSE_101 to be associated with BLUEPRINT_A. COURSE_101 also gets an initial content and settings sync, which basically gives it an identical setup to the Blueprint. This is nice.

However, you might not expect that all 100 previously associated courses in BLUEPRINT_A will also get a content sync at the same time. So if your instructional designers have been "cleaning up" or re-arranging in one of those previously associated courses, they may be surprised to notice that the blueprint has pushed out content to their courses again.


One other quirk: the sync to the new course includes settings and content from the Blueprint. However, previously associated courses will only get a content sync from this sync trigger.

Have you noticed any other unexpected Blueprint behavior?