Overview

This KB article describes how ISSS Admins can quickly create departments and users in one quick upload, rather than creating them one by one manually.

If you are now implementing Terra Dotta ISSS: Scholar, there is a good chance you must add multiple departments across campus to your Staff Management. Departments and Departmental Admins can be added manually, for more information, follow the processes in Scholar Admin: Add a Group and Scholar Admin: Add a User KB articles. However, during your initial implementation (or even after), you may need to create many departments, each with multiple administrators who work with the ISSS office. This can be done with greater ease in Scholar Admin > Site Settings > Data Import tab, which allows groups and users to be created in bulk.

• Using the User Bulk Upload Tool
• Excel Template

• Uploading Excel Template to Import Departments and Department Admins

• New Imported User Results
• Existing Users - No Action Required
• Rows with errors - Correct and re-import

Using the Import Departments and Department Admins Tool

Navigate to Scholar Admin > Site Settings and then click on Import Data to get to the Import Departments and Department Admins tool. 

Excel Template

Begin by selecting the Excel Template tool located in the upper right corner of the Import Departments and Department Admin section. This will download an Excel document that has a pre-configured template that you will use to import any departments or users. 

After you have downloaded the Excel Template, open it to review the following columns:

• First Name
• Last Name (required to import a department admin)
• Email Address(required to import a department admin)
• Campus Login ID
• Department (required to import a department/department admin)
• Title
• Phone
• Campus Address

Note: You cannot change the template headers. Also the Name and Department fields are case/character sensitive. Ensure that the same format used for any manually entered department/groups from Staff Management > Groups is used in your import file. If multiple formats are used, multiple departments/users will be created: for example, Chem Engineering and Chemical Engineering.

Uploading Excel Template to Import Departments and Department Admins

You can only import 999 Departmental Admin users at a time. After you have filled out your template, click Choose File on the import screen, then click the blue Import button.

You will see three separate sections on the screen:

• New Imported Department/User Results: departments and users that have successfully uploaded to your site
• Existing Departments/Users - No action required: these departments and users already exist in your site. The Bulk Upload Tool does not match on existing users
• Rows with errors - Correct and re-import: these departments and users have errors and must be corrected before uploading

If you would like to build departments but not include departmental users, you can. Your template will simply include a list of departments in the corresponding column. You can then use the same tool to add department administrators when you are ready for the admin to receive their invitation to the system.

Note: If you receive an error about requiring an email address when uploading only department names, please review the the headers on your excel sheet to be sure they match the template.

New Imported User Results

This section displays all new users. In the rows, you can see the information that was entered and associated with each user.  



In this imported list, there are five new users with varying bits of information. The users with contact information will have their contact information displayed on the Departmental Contact Information Configurations screen (when they log in as a departmental user). In this example above, both new users and new departments have been created at this point. That is, if the Mechanical Engineering Department had not already been set up in Scholar Admin > Staff Management > Groups, the import tool has now created that group and assigned the user Carol Hannigan to it.

If the user has information in the Title, Phone, and Campus Address columns of the template, this information will be automatically transferred to the department admin's Departmental Configurations area. If the columns are empty, the departmental admin will need to complete these fields on their own for them to operate as designed.



Should an existing user be assigned a new department, they will also be listed in this area.  Note: the import does not overwrite existing permissions. If a user loses permissions for a particular department, that department will need to removed manually from the Edit User screen (Scholar Admin > Staff Management > Users and click the edit pencil to the right of the user's name).

Existing Users - No Action Required

This section indicates users on your import file who already have existing records within Scholar Admin > Staff Management. Their row in the import tool included a department to which they were already associated assigned in the template. Therefore, no additions to their permissions are needed. 



Note: the import does not overwrite existing permissions. The import tool will not identify if Scholar Admin > Staff Management indicates departments other than what is listed on the template file. 

Rows with errors - Correct and re-import

This section of the tool indicates which rows of your template file included errors. No action was taken on these rows. The best practice is to review your Excel file and re-import these rows after correcting the data. 



With the users above, you can see that Louanna Debbins is missing an email address, while Karina is missing a Last Name, a correct email address, and a department, all of which are required fields for importing users. Row # refers to the row in your Excel file that needs correction.