Possibilities & risks of adding a term to a subaccount with courses in it?

[g_schriek]

Hello,

Since we are working on automation and will start having a connection between our SIS (Osiris) and Canvas, the SIS admin asked us to set up terms that match those in Osiris. Unfortunately, we have no terms set up other than the default term for our current subaccounts and courses.
This will mean that we will have to add terms and ideally apply those terms to subaccounts with existing courses whereas the guide describes terms will have to be added before there are courses in the account.

Is it possible to change courses from the default term to a newly added term and what is the risk if doing so?
It will probably be only for the courses of this academic year and we are currently not really making use of terms in grading book, analytics, reports etc. Starting academic year 2020/2021 we will have everything in place before courses are added.

Would love to hear your experience with this,

thanks in advance,

Gerdien

[bneporadny · Accepted solution]

Hi Gerdien,

First terms‌ are not associated with a particular sub-account, they are globally available for all sub-accounts‌.  Secondly I have switched terms‌ & sub-accounts‌ of courses before with students in them and have not had any issue nor adverse effects on the course nor students in them.

I would say be sure the new term you are switching the course to has the correct access dates setup before moving the course into it. Other than than you should be good to go. 

[g_schriek]

Thanks Brian, we've started a test and it seems all to go well!