Adding one user to multiple groups via bulk upload

So I've got a nice women from a council buying 300 courses for nurseries in her area.  She wants to able to keep an eye on them and see how many have completed and how many are being lazy and not doin' their learnins.

I posted before about using groups for enrolment keys and creating a new role with the ability to run reports.  The trouble with using these two methods together is that the person with the special role (I called it Local Authority) needs to be in all the groups that correspond with the enrolment keys she's giving out.  This means  I have to add my council lady to three hundred groups and there isn't just an easy way of doing it in one go.

The way around it is to use the bulk user upload option.  You can upload a CSV file to create new users, enrol them on a course, put them in a group and give them a non default role.  Now my council lady already has a user account so I don't need to create that or give her a password.

I started a spread sheet with these column headings:

username

firstname

lastname

email

course1

role1

group1

I fill in the next line with the existing accounts username, first name, last name and email address.  Then I copy and paste that line into the next 299 rows.  The three hundred enrolment keys are distributed across three courses, one hundred in each.  So in the course1 column, the first hundred rows are the short name of the first course.  I thought at first it would be the course ID but it is the short name you need.  The next hundred rows are the second course and the third hundred rows are the third course.  This will enrol her on the courses as a student.

Under role1 I put the special role short name, in may case it's LA.  Under group1 I copy and pasted the group names from the spreadsheet I used to upload groups to each course.

Then I saved this as a CSV and uploaded it under the Site Administration > Users > Accounts > Upload Users option. When you click upload you'll be taken to a page with a few options.  On this page, depending on your situation, change Upload Type to 'Add new and update existing users' This means it will update the existing account with the new courses, role and groups rather than trying to create the same account a bunch of times.

Hit Upload Users and the job should be done.  If you check enrolled uses on a course the account should have been added to it with the new role and put in all the groups.  So now my council lady can see the activity of everyone that uses one of her enrolment keys.

Assign an oversight role

Say the manager of a nursery school buys training courses for all the staff.  We issue enrolment keys, the manager distributes them and sits back happy to let the staff get on with it.  Three weeks later the manager wants to see how far the staff have got.

As an Admin create a new role.  Go to Settings > Site Admin > Users > Permissions > Define roles.  Click Add a new role.  Give the role a name (e.g. Monitor), short name and a description if you want.  In Role Archetype choose what role you want the new role to be based on.  I went with none-editing teacher.  In Context I chose Course, this means the role can be assigned at the course level.

Now go through the permissions and allow any that you want this new role to have.  This took a bit of trial and error for me but I pretty much allowed all reports and logs to be run and allowed them to see participants.

With the new role created you need the person to have an account.  You can do this for them or make them do it themselves.

Go to the course you want the person to be able to monitor.  This is the course they have bought for their staff, if they bought more than one you'll have to do this for each course they have staff enrolled on.  Go to Settings  Course Administration > Users > Enrolled Users.  At the top click Enrol Users.  In the Assign roles drop down choose the new role you created, find the person you want to give monitor rights to on the list and click enrol.  This will allow then to run the reports and see the participants of this course.

I've used separate groups so I can issue individual enrolment keys, these groups are all separate so users can't see each other.  This means that the new monitor won't see them either so we have to ass the monitor to all the groups their staff are in.  Refresh the Enrolled Users page of the course you're in and find the new monitor user.  Click the little plus sign in the groups column and add them to all the same groups as their staff, (bare in mind some of the enrolment keys they bought may not have been activated yet so add them to every group that corresponds with an enrolment key they purchased).  They will now be able to see everyone in the same groups that they are in.

Create new Local Authority role
Have the LA sign up like normal.in the course
In the course go enrolled users
Click Enrol users at the top.
Enrol the LA as the new Local Authority role.
Go to enrolled users
Click the plus sign Enrol that LA in all the relevant groups.
They will now be able to see everyone in those groups and when they last logged in.