Anyone linked to a UNIT-e database system to login users by courses that already exist in that system or exported same information?
Hi Rico,
We're starting to look at how this might be done. Also, I'm told that Capita themselves are investigating Unit-e / Moodle integration
We're starting to look at how this might be done. Also, I'm told that Capita themselves are investigating Unit-e / Moodle integration
Rico,
we used another proprietary VLE that had a dynamic linking system with Unit-e. Now that we have changed to Moodle we too are looking into this.
I think it will also encourage Capita to develop a linking system if they had an idea of what the market will be. Please let me know if you are aware of any Moodle institution that are using both Unit-e and Moodle as we too are looking at a link.
Hi Jon,
We have previously used Capita's "MLE link" to enrol students on courses in Learnwise. It was so inefficient that the scripts took hours and hours to run...
In comparison, Moodle offers various efficient course enrolment options, which we're currently considering. Please message me if you'd like any further info.
We have previously used Capita's "MLE link" to enrol students on courses in Learnwise. It was so inefficient that the scripts took hours and hours to run...
In comparison, Moodle offers various efficient course enrolment options, which we're currently considering.
Please message me if you'd like any further info.Hi Wild Girl,
we too had an awful time with the Capita MLE linker.
we will be looking at ways of linking Unit-e to Moodle via the enrolment plugin and I would be glad to hear what you are currently considering.
jon e
any updates on this? was one ever made?
Hi C R,
We use the external database enrolment plugin, however if you have Capita's MLE link then you may consider managing enrolment via IMS Enterprise file.
We use the external database enrolment plugin, however if you have Capita's MLE link then you may consider managing enrolment via IMS Enterprise file.
I have not seen this function before.
any chance of supplying the ext database you use? in dummy format, so I can get an idea on fields etc?
Hi,
I don't work on the Unit-e side, but I can hopefully explain a little bit about how we do this... Our external database is very basic, but seems to be working OK.
Every night a collection of text files *magically* appear on one of our servers - these are created by the Unit-e warehouse. We use these for a bunch of things, but of interest in this case is the one that contains student enrolments. The format of this enrolment file is pretty straight forward,
"StdtAdNo","EnrStart","EnrEnd","Cls"
"student1","11-SEP-06","20-JUL-07","class code"
"student2","11-SEP-06","20-JUL-07","class code"
etc...
where "student1" and "student2" are the student id numbers and "class code" is the code for the class they're enrolled on. I guess it depends how you have the codes setup in Unit-e, but for us the first 3 characters of the class code are enough (with a few exceptions) to be able to create a link between the class in unit-e and the course in moodle. So we parse that file and create a database containing the student id and the useful part of the class code. This is pretty much all that is in our external database. This happens every night to keep the database in sync with the enrolments from unit-e (e.g. if a student drops an enrolment, they'll disappear from the file and will then be removed from the database)
To link with moodle the student ids in the external database match the username field in the mdl_user table and we use the idnumber field in mdl_course to fill in the 3 digits (occasionally more) from the relevant class code.
Not heard of 'warehouse builder' - something of your own? SIMS? or ???
Do you have a link?
Thanks
Andy
Did some digging to answer my own question, and for benefit of others.
As far as I can find out, UNit-E is timetabling software from Capita for post-16/FE/?? colleges in UK.
Presumably, warehouse builder is part of this. If I am wrong, perhaps someone will correct me.
As a secondary school (11-18), we are interested in the possibilities of linking
Capita's school software (SIMS/Nova) to create the enrollment import files.
Andy
Unit-E is a fairly complete management system aimed at higher ed - it covers staff (personell), student management, curriculum management (courses, stages, classes, timetables), exam management, enrollments etc etc.
Its quite modular, warehouse builder is one such module. It allows you to build exports of your data that can be used for various things.
For enrollment using live unit-e data we use the external database option. Effectivley this is just a SQL Server view which lists students ids and the courses the are enrolled onto. I use the Id Number field on the course in moodle to hold the reference from unite, the students login using their network id (which happens to be their MIS ID Number i.e. t000xxxx) via ldap. When they login the external database script looks for their ID and gets the approriate courses, it then enrolls them onto those courses. These enrollments are updated each time the student logs in.
If you have unit-e report generate you can write the report in that and cut 'n paste the SQL for the view. All you need to do is drag in Student, Enrollment and Module. Pick up the 'studentreference' from student and the 'reference' from module. Make sure you filter the modules to only pick up courses or classes (whichever your using) in our setup this is done by adding a where clause that says 'module.type='cs' (it would be cl for class). You should also filter out dead enrollments - filter on enrollment.currentStatus and set the criteria as ToText(1,NULL). You'll need to tweak those codes for your own mis setup, but you can probably get the idea from what i've posted above.
Also - I wasn't confortable linking moodle directly to our unit-e DB server, even with a read only login. I suspect your MIS people won't be either. You might want to look into some form of Data Transformation Service (a standard feature in SQL Server 2000/2005 - google for a tutorial, is pretty easy to setup) to export the data to your Moodle database each night. I put the data into a table called link_currentEnrollments in the moodle DB and link moodle's external database enrollment to that table. This has the advantage of another layer of security and also a big performance increase over connecting to a remote server.
If your unit-e is backed by oracle you will need to look into scripting a way to transfer the data - simple in PHP, and then run this script via Cron or something reguarly.
Hope the above is of some use - its just the basic details of our setup, but so far its proven very reliable and robust.
Its quite modular, warehouse builder is one such module. It allows you to build exports of your data that can be used for various things.
For enrollment using live unit-e data we use the external database option. Effectivley this is just a SQL Server view which lists students ids and the courses the are enrolled onto. I use the Id Number field on the course in moodle to hold the reference from unite, the students login using their network id (which happens to be their MIS ID Number i.e. t000xxxx) via ldap. When they login the external database script looks for their ID and gets the approriate courses, it then enrolls them onto those courses. These enrollments are updated each time the student logs in.
If you have unit-e report generate you can write the report in that and cut 'n paste the SQL for the view. All you need to do is drag in Student, Enrollment and Module. Pick up the 'studentreference' from student and the 'reference' from module. Make sure you filter the modules to only pick up courses or classes (whichever your using) in our setup this is done by adding a where clause that says 'module.type='cs' (it would be cl for class). You should also filter out dead enrollments - filter on enrollment.currentStatus and set the criteria as ToText(1,NULL). You'll need to tweak those codes for your own mis setup, but you can probably get the idea from what i've posted above.
Also - I wasn't confortable linking moodle directly to our unit-e DB server, even with a read only login. I suspect your MIS people won't be either. You might want to look into some form of Data Transformation Service (a standard feature in SQL Server 2000/2005 - google for a tutorial, is pretty easy to setup) to export the data to your Moodle database each night. I put the data into a table called link_currentEnrollments in the moodle DB and link moodle's external database enrollment to that table. This has the advantage of another layer of security and also a big performance increase over connecting to a remote server.
If your unit-e is backed by oracle you will need to look into scripting a way to transfer the data - simple in PHP, and then run this script via Cron or something reguarly.
Hope the above is of some use - its just the basic details of our setup, but so far its proven very reliable and robust.
Thanks for the illumination and clarification about Unit-E.
Unfortunately Capita do not like letting schools get at the SQL data in SIMS - unless you pay large amounts for some kind of licence - and there is no automatic/scheduled report generation.
However, we are just starting to use a product called eMerge (from Encounter-IT) that does do scheduled transfers of SIMS data to Active Directory (for users - and thus to Moodle for authentication). We will be looking to see if it will do the job for enrollment files as well (we do not want to do enrollment from AD).
I will report further somewhere in Moodle in due course.
Andy