One User SIS ID but multiple Canvas accounts

[Skot]

At my institution, we use a single SIS ID for individuals, regardless of whether they hold more than one status (e.g., faculty, staff, or student). This practice causes complications within Canvas. For example, an instructor may have an SIS ID of 12345678. If that same instructor decides to take a class, the institution continues using the same 12345678 ID. However, now the individual has both a faculty/staff email address and a student email address (as our system adheres to a "one person, one ID" rule).

Canvas, via the SIS import, associates all courses—both instructor and student—with the Canvas account tied to the SIS ID that was created first. This leads to confusion, as users expect their student courses to appear under their student email login, and their faculty courses to be listed under their faculty/staff email login.

I have been manually merging these accounts when the issue arises, but now that we are using Dropout Detective and must assign users restricted admin privileges, manual merging is no longer a viable solution.

Does anyone else encounter this issue, and if so, how have you addressed it?

~Skot

[JamesSekcienski]

@Skot 

Is your institution able to customize the values for your SIS Imports? 

Since you are making multiple Canvas accounts for the same user, but different roles, maybe you could append a letter or role to the SIS ID.  For example, you could use something like one of the following for the student account "S12345678", "12345678_S", or "12345678-student" and then use something like one of the following for the faculty/staff (employee) account "E12345678", "12345678_E", or "12345678-employee".

Unfortunately, historical records would likely still be mixed up since you can't transfer the work/activity from one account to another without merging.  It would also be important to evaluate other dependencies and/or integrations to know how this may affect them to determine if it is a feasible option to consider.

We have also seen issues with some LTIs on how they handle users with multiple roles and it is usually one of the items we evaluate before adopting the tool.  If you only need to make an adjustment for admin roles, you might also consider creating additional Canvas accounts, just for the necessary admin access.

[Skot]

James,

Yes, we do, and we've considered adding a character to the user SIS ID, as you suggested. The challenge arises when users have dual roles, such as being both Faculty/Staff and a Student, and therefore have two separate email addresses. Since users log into Canvas using their email addresses, they get confused when they log in and don’t see their classes on the Canvas Dashboard. This happens because the classes were uploaded into the Canvas account associated with the SIS ID, not the one tied to their other role. (The SIS import recognizes the SIS ID as already in use and skips adding it to the correct account.)

We hadn't encountered any issues with LTIs for users with admin privileges until we started using Dropout Detective—so this has been a learning experience for us too. Haha!

[JamesSekcienski]

@Skot 

Yeah, I can understand that issue with users getting mixed up with which account to use based on how the SIS ID is currently being assigned.

As far as the IDs, I was suggesting that the ID stays as just the number in your SIS.  However, when you generate the import files, I was suggesting that is when you append a character.  Thus, a single ID from your SIS could be associated with 2 different IDs in Canvas to handle users with mixed roles that have multiple accounts.  That way a user account created with a student email address would be assigned an SIS ID with the student character appended to the ID from your SIS, while a user created with a faculty/staff email address would be assigned an SIS ID with the faculty/staff character appended to the ID from your SIS.  Then, enrollment imports would need to make sure that if they are being enrolled as a student to use their SIS ID with the student character appended and when they are being enrolled as a teacher to use their SIS ID with the faculty/staff character appended.  I'm not sure how complex your imports are and use cases, so I may be oversimplifying the handling of the IDs.

[ClarkDow]

One approach you might want to consider is revisiting your SIS import setup, especially how Canvas handles multiple roles. The system’s linking of accounts can get tricky when someone holds multiple roles under the same SIS ID, like faculty and student.

Additionally, if you're managing sensitive user information across accounts, implementing something like kyc verification (Know Your Customer) could help streamline the process of ensuring accurate user identities and permissions.

[JohnLouviere]

Skot, were you able to resolve this? I'm looking at a similar problem at my campus. We have non-traditional workforce training students (non-degree) that may also be enrolled in degree-granting courses. There are two different enrollment systems. Optimally I would like to manage the student across, Catalog, Canvas, Canvas Careers, and Parchment. I'm just check to see if this problem has been solved.

[Skot]

Hello John,

No. Our work around is to add a "s" to the end of the SIS ID of the student account (example: 23151234s) and then merge their two Canvas accounts.  It's not what we like but its the best we could come up with for now.  I attached an example.