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Grapevine Learning Support

Importing enrolments from a spreadsheet

Also in Instructors

A file of people, enrolled in one go. It creates accounts for anybody who has none, so a list of names and addresses is enough.

The file

A CSV with a header row. The columns it reads:

  • email — required. This is the person; everything keys on it.
  • first name and last name — used if the account has to be created.
  • course — required. The course’s address slug or its id.
  • role — optional, defaults to student.

Save as CSV from whatever you use. Exports with accented characters are handled; so are files saved on Windows.

Check before apply

The importer always does two steps, and they are two separate actions rather than one with a tick box — “tell me what this does” and “do it” should not be one mistyped setting apart.

  1. Check. Upload the file. Nothing is written. You get a row-by-row report: who will be created, who already exists, which courses were found, and which rows are wrong.
  2. Read the report. Particularly the cost, and anything saying a course was not found.
  3. Apply. Only then is anything written.

What it will cost

Every student enrolment on a free course is billable — currently $5 each. A 500-row file is a $2,500 charge on the next nightly run.

The check tells you the figure before you commit. Read it. A file with a duplicated block of rows, or one that enrols everybody onto three courses instead of one, looks almost identical to a correct file and costs three times as much.

Running it twice is safe

Enrolments are unique per person and course, so a second run of the same file enrols nobody twice and bills nothing twice. “Did that work?” is the commonest reason a file gets uploaded again, and it does not punish you for it.

Common failures

  • Course not found. Check the slug against the course’s address — it is the last part of the URL, not the title.
  • Two addresses for one person. They get two accounts. Deduplicate the file first; it is far easier than merging afterwards.
  • A stray column or a shifted header. The check will show addresses appearing in the name column. Look at the first few rows of the report rather than skipping to the total.