Once the nodes in the institutional hierarchy have been created, we can associate different elements with the node to which they belong.

Associating elements manually

To associate an element with a node, we will first access the node itself by clicking its name in the tree structure on the left side of the screen.

Then, we will select what we want to add: Administrators, Courses, Organizations, Users, Tabs, Modules, or Tools.

For each of these elements, a different page will appear where we can search for and select the relevant elements: remember that they must already exist in the system; we are not creating elements but associating them.

Associating courses and users with a data integration

Using the Blackboard integration capabilities, we can associate courses, organizations, and users with the hierarchy nodes we have, thus enabling a node administrator with the appropriate system roles to view them and perform the necessary functions on them. Other elements must be associated manually.

We need to create a data integration that receives information from external systems, which are responsible for delivering a file with the necessary information to the corresponding endpoint. In this article, you can see where to locate the integration endpoints.

These are the minimum data to send in an example of associating courses with nodes. Multiple columns with other data can be added; they can be viewed here: Snapshop Flat file Header description 

• EXTERNAL_ASSOCIATION_KEY: A unique value that indicates the association of a specific course with a specific node.
• EXTERNAL_NODE_KEY: The node identifier
• EXTERNAL_COURSE_KEY: The identifier of the course to associate
• DATA_SOURCE_KEY: If it is not specified in the file, it will be specified in the data integration configuration.

When associating users with nodes, we will use EXTERNAL_USER_KEY instead of EXTERNAL_COURSE_KEY. For organizations, use EXTERNAL_ORGANIZATION_KEY.

This would be an example of the contents of an integration file with the minimum fields for associating courses with a node:

external_association_key|external_node_key|external_course_key
nodeA-2223AAA001|nodeA|2223AAA001
nodeA-2223AAA002|nodeA|2223AAA002
nodeA-2223AAA003|nodeA|2223AAA003
nodeB-2223BBB001|nodeB|2223BBB001

You can also upload files directly to the integration if you need to do so manually on occasion.

Prepare your file in a text editor and save it as UTF-8 with BOM. Follow the instructions for manually uploading files, and be sure to choose the appropriate endpoint: Course association, Organization association, or User association.