Batch files are delimited files that allow you to create or copy as many as 500 courses at one time. To learn more about creating batch files, see Batch File Guidelines for Courses.
Create courses in batch
- On the Administrator Panel in the Courses section, select Courses.
- Point to Create Course and select Batch from the list.
- On the Batch Create Courses page, select the File Location field or select Browse.
- In the File Upload window, navigate to the batch file and select Open.
- Select the file Delimiter Type that the batch file uses. If you select Automatic, Blackboard Learn analyzes the batch file and determines the delimiter based on the frequency of the character in the file.
- Select Submit.
Copy courses in batch
To better serve your integration needs, the new SIS Framework provides an improved interface for managing and processing Snapshot based data. While current command-line based snapshots will continue to work with legacy data objects, the Snapshot command line tool and the Snapshot XML data format are deprecated in Blackboard Learn 9.1 Service Pack 8 and will receive only maintenance fixes. Additionally, the Snapshot command line tools will be removed in the Learn SaaS deployment.
You can copy multiple courses at once with a batch file and the Snapshot command-line tool.
The batch copy performs an exact copy of each source course. An exact copy includes user enrollments along with course information and materials.
You can create new courses with the batch copy, or you can copy course information and content into an existing course. If the destination course already exists, the batch copy updates the course information but does not overwrite any course content.
- Create the batch file. The batch copy file format does not follow the same rules as the batch file for creating a new course. Instead, the batch copy uses the Snapshot flat file format.
- Run the batch copy command in Snapshot from the Web/app server. The command syntax is as follows, where path_to_file is the full path to the copy batch file:
Windows Syntax: C:\Blackboard\tools\admin\BatchCourseCopy.cmd path_to_file
UNIX Syntax: /usr/local/blackboard/tools/admin/BatchCourseCopy.sh path_to_file
The exact path to the Blackboard Learn directory may be different based on where Blackboard Learn was installed.
The command only processes a batch copy on the default virtual installation. To perform a batch copy on another virtual installation, use the COPYINTO Snapshot command.