TECH TALK SESSION
Imports are one of the most crucial steps in setting up your Accudemia account. Whether they’re performed by the center admin or a member of the IT staff, they’re important for making sure your tracking process produces accurate data. Typical information imported from other systems such as your SIS includes student information, course data, and student registration.
In this week’s Accudemia session, Support Specialist Jorge Rodriguez spoke to attendees about common issues that come up during the import process, and how to fix them.
Issues with ADX
ADX, also known as Accudemia Data Exchange, is a small, standalone application that must be installed on the computer that will perform the import. It is the tool used to push data from other systems into Accudemia.
The most common issue during the import process that is directly related to ADX itself is that ADX did not install correctly. Usually, this is due to lack of permissions, missing pre-requirements on the computer, or possibly an issue with your antivirus. To remedy this, you’ll need to reinstall ADX, this time checking to make sure you have the correct permissions and computer pre-requirements (.NET framework 4.0 or above), and that your institution’s antivirus software has whitelisted ADX.
Issues with the CSV Files
Many users may be unfamiliar with CSV files. It’s a file format that can be read by a text reader or by Microsoft Excel but is generally built-in Microsoft Excel. This is the file type required by ADX during imports. Occasionally, issues with importing can be traced back to the CSV file itself.
The most common issue is that the CSV file was not formatted properly. Most CSV files begin life as Excel spreadsheets, and CSV is not the default file format in Excel, so it must be specifically saved as a CSV file so ADX can use it. The same is true if you’re building it in a text reader such as Notepad. If you check your file that you wish to import and notice its extension is not .csv, simply open it in Excel or Notepad and save it as a CSV file.
The second issue is related to the file’s column headings. Each column containing data in the CSV file must have a heading and there can not be any duplicated headings in the file.
You may also encounter errors if you did not include the proper unique ID values as needed in each row for some attributes such as “Class” in the course import and other similar imports. Remember that for one specific subject area, you may have many classes or sections, but each class can only relate to one subject, and each class CRN and Name must be unique.
Double-check your day and time formats as well when importing class schedules. Remember that days of the week must be formatted using their full name (e.g. “Monday”) or the first three letters (e.g. “Mon”). The time must also be formatted specifically. You can enter it as military time (HH:MM) or as AM or PM (HH:MM AM or HH:MM PM).
We also sometimes see users having difficulty retrieving the file for use in ADX because it is saved somewhere where the importing user does not have permission to read or write the file. The solution here is simple: save a copy of the file somewhere that you can be assured it is accessible by all crucial parties.
The final common issue has the easiest fix of all. ADX will be unable to use the file during the import process if it is opened on the computer. If you encounter any difficulties, that’s the first thing we recommend checking. Make sure the file is closed and not in use by another program before proceeding!
Inactive Users
A common concern raised by clients is that users have been wrongly marked as “inactive.” Often this coincides with a recent import, and the problem can actually be traced back to that process. It’s usually due to an incomplete or inaccurate CSV file. If you’re seeing a lot of inactive users who should be active, take the following steps:
- Make sure that 100% of your active students are in the registration import. In order to ensure cleaner data and avoid violating the license by having too many active users, most accounts elect to deactivate students automatically if they are not registered for any courses that term. It’s important to make sure that your registration import file is complete and not broken up into several files. We have seen some clients attempt this and this often results in incorrect data or errors.
- Make sure that all user IDs are unique. A quick search for duplicates can find the culprit in this instance.
- If need be, you can also add an “Active” column to the user import CSV file and use a Boolean value (1,0 or Yes, No) to mark students as Active or Inactive.
As you can see, most issues users run into during the import process have relatively simple causes and fixes. If you’re an Accudemia client, we will help you find a solution as quickly as possible to any issues, but we hope the above tips can assist you if you find yourself with any roadblocks during the import process! Please join us next Tuesday for our next Accudemia weekly session.
Join us next time!
Engineerica Systems is pleased to present our Tech Tip segment recap for the Accudemia session on 9/14/2021. Held Tuesdays at 1 pm EST (weekly during the academic year, and monthly during the summer), Accudemia clients can join a session to learn about a quick, useful topic from one of our Support Specialists. Each week, we’ll follow up Tech Tip Tuesday with a blog recapping that week’s topic. Check the page about our Monthy Accudemia Session to find out more about our next session and for more ideas about helping our students achieve success!
