Unique ID for cross-listed courses

[AychaEdwards]

Hello,

I wanted to know if there's a way to customize how the Unique ID for a cross-listed course is created. Right now, the courses imported to Canvas retain their original Unique IDs, which is helpful when we export the Canvas courses and want to cross-reference them with our our list from our database, but cross-listed or merged courses end up having a different Unique ID, and ID that is automatically generated by Canvas. This makes it extremely difficult to tight the cross-listed course back to to their original individual courses when we export them from Canvas. I was wondering if there's a way we can customize the ID so it merges the two original Unique IDs and then separate them by a comma (for example) like it's done for the Course Code. 

If you look at the examples in the attached photo, the first three courses are merged and the different codes are separated by a comma, while the other courses only have one code since they are not merged, but when you look at the Unique ID, the ID for the merged courses is a Canvas generated ID, while for the other courses, it's their original ID.

I'm an admin.

[Chris_Hofer]

@AychaEdwards ...

I'm not seeing your attached image(s).  Could you please post those as an edit to your original posting?  Thanks!

[AychaEdwards]

Sorry about that. Here's the image. Thank you for replying! 

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @AychaEdwards,

Thanks for the screenshot, it definitely helps show what you're seeing.

As a Canvas admin myself, I can tell you with nearly 100% certainty that the numbers you're seeing in the "Unique Code" column in your screenshot are not really generated by Canvas itself, but usually from your student information system (SIS) integration.  Does that screenshot happen to originate from Watermark Course Evaluations and Surveys rather than Canvas itself, as Canvas doesn't use that terminology anywhere, but I know Watermark does.  If the screenshot is from watermark, it probably means the sis_id field in Canvas for those courses is actually blank, and populating that would change the data that Watermark pulls into their system.  Let us know if this is likely the case...

-Chris