CSU Long Beach "regularly extracts data from CMS to a set of files."   

Current Environment

• XML files are extracted from PPS daily.   
• The roles of FACULTY, STAFF, and STUDENT are fed to the LDAP system which creates and manages authentication passwords. 
• Currently, the user data file only contains students, faculty, and staff who are active in the current term. 
• Courses are created daily.  Organizations are created once a week.  This file only contains courses for the current term.
• The files from PPS and LDAP are then modified or “swizzled” via what we call the Swizzler process into a flat file for Blackboard.   

The Process

• The integration process begins at midnight.  First, the necessary files are extracted from TIM and PPS and then the Swizzler process begins., After several hours, Snapshot captures the files for Blackboard.  The entire integration usually ends around 7:00 a.m.   
• This process regularly creates course sections and updates user enrollment when they are created and updated in PPS.
• The organizations are created and/or updated once a week.  
• Organizations are created for every major (PLANs) listed in Peoplesoft. 
• Students associated with the majors are populated into the organizations once a week.
• If students drop a course, the students are made unavailable in the course but not deleted.  We have not removed students who are no longer enrolled before now.

• The extracts are the following:

• Student, Faculty and Staff Users from LDAP system
• Courses
• Enrollments in courses including instructor assignments
• Student’s majors
• Description of major codes

• Currently, the integration process utilizes our test environment as a staging area which has hindered our ability to have a true test environment. 
• Merged courses are requested by users.  This information is maintained by the Swizzler.  The Swizzler modifies the course data files to merge the courses. 
• Cross-Listed courses are merged upon request.  This information is maintained by the Swizzler.  The Swizzler modifies the course data files to merge the courses. 

Future Environment

• We are currently working with Blackboard Global Services to modify the Snapshot process to integrate our data directly from Swizzler to Blackboard bypassing by the test environment altogether. 
• This updated integration will assist us in running a  process to disable the students that are no longer enrolled from the organizations and the system in general. 
• At a later date we will be able to remove these users from the system and as a result, our database will be greatly reduced. 
• We will be able to update and remove data on a daily basis, 7 days a week.
• We will be able to run several terms simultaneously.