Blueprint syncs should not override set dates with nulls

[catya]

Our delivery model leverages Blueprints that are associated with courses that have varying start/end/ module lock dates. Our courses are technical Bootcamps about 6 months in length, and they do not follow a traditional Semester system.

We set the module unlock dates for each class, but then when we need a blueprint sync to correct a content issue or add something new, those dates are overwritten with nulls because there are no dates on the blueprints themselves.

This leads to lots of manual work and problems for us, of course, but it's also much better design to leave data in place rather than removing it on any sort of sync.  If a value is set in a child, a value NOT set in the parent should not remove it.  

Thank for your consideration!

[jdetig]

We desperately want to use Blueprint, however when associating a course with a Blueprint course, the first 'sync', which is automatic, does not allow you to retain your course settings including start and end dates.  Subsequent 'syncs' allow you to keep course settings, but not the initial 'sync'.

For institutions using their SIS to generate their courses, this means that all the start and end dates from the SIS will be overwritten during the Blueprint association process.  To get around it, users have to take a course file with the start and end dates and do a manual SIS import while adjusting the 'interface' settings. 

We are desperate to use this functionality, please allow users the option to retain or overwrite course settings during the initial Blueprint 'sync'.  Thank you 🙂 

[sam_brancatisan]

We have the same issue - we deliver the same course to multiple intakes on different schedules, so they all have modules releasing on different dates. Courses can run for up to 18 months, so in a lot of cases, the content is still being developed for later modules while earlier ones are being delivered, so we want to be able to sync new content over regularly, but not release it until the date it's required for each cohort. At the moment we're having to manually publish content for each cohort as needed, or quickly re-apply lock dates to each course every time we sync.

The value of the blueprint feature is being able to keep content in live intakes associated with the original version, but if lock dates are being overridden, the blueprint seems to become not much more useful than a regular template.

[nathanphillips]

+1

we have the same issue. The SIS sync creates the start/end dates perfectly, then the blueprint wipes them out. 

[PhillipJacobs]

Yes, this is a large oversight in the SIS Import tool and BP usage. Especially considering the BP APIs support whether to sync the course settings or not. An easy to implement solution is when a start_date or end_date is included then this is set to not sync settings. Also the behavior is not consistent. It does not sync things like the short and long names, but does the dates and status. 

This would be less of an emergency type issue if was also included in the SIS Import documentation. Then I could have accounted for it early on in our SIS integration design and not at the end of QA testing with go-live around the corner.

[ProductPanda]

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