Identifying duplicate users for merge

[lmurray2]

Our Canvas instance serves multiple different user groups, including some that authenticate and create user accounts via Catalog SSO. Other user accounts are established via SIS import. The result of this is that we have users that possess multiple accounts. Obviously, this can cause some confusion in our enrollment processes.

To identify possible candidates for merge, we can identify these by matching login IDs (in our case, emails) across accounts in the instance. Of course, this is complicated by the fact that users often have multiple login ID's.

Any best practices or tips for identifying accounts for merge? Or, to ammeliorate the issue in some other way? 

Thanks  

Logan

[robert_hollenbe]

You might already have this on your to-do list, but didn't mention it. So I will chip in more work (instead of the solution you seek :-))

You will want to work through the implications of merging accounts with each LTI vendor. Not all vendors use the login ID field as their foreign keys (at least not in my experience). Depending on the identifier, this can raise license count and/or identity collision risks.

This would be especially important for any tools that aggregate or persist student data outside the scope of single courses.