Import sessions for course updates

This article will inform you about course imports in Springest. We offer a service to our providers to import their courses automatically using an Importer.

For who are import sessions interesting:

For providers who have shared their course data using a CSV-, XML-file or an XML-feed. We have configured an import per institute (account). After each import session we store the results and show it in the admin. Once the import has been started a new row with results will be added. Also, the results will also be shared with the right contact person by email when import is completed.

The page will only be visible in the admin when:

You have shared an CSV or XML file before
You have shared a data contact person. Please contact datasupport@springest.com if you like to have access to the import pages in admin.

Import sessions page

On this page you can view the results of all import sessions for the selected import configuration. You can view the log of the latest import by clicking on 'Show log'. Below you can find short description of the different columns.

Date: The exact date and time of the import session
Trainings in import: The total number of courses in the XML and the total number of courses expected to be published on Springest.
Created: The total number of courses that have been created during import. The courses are new in Springest.
Updated courses: The total number of courses that have been updated during import.
Deleted in session: The total number of courses that have been deleted during the import. These courses were not listed in the XML.
Successful: The number of courses that have been successfully imported.
Failed: The number of courses that have not been imported successfully.

Log

From the log you can view the latest import result per course. You can check the log to see what courses failed to be imported. We always list the ID (= course id in Springest Database) and external ID (= course id in XML given by Provider) for each course. For example:

With the external ID you can look back the course in the XML file for further investigation.

List of common import failures

It can happen that one or more courses fail during the import. Below is a list of common failures and resolution. If you can not find yours in the list, please contact datasupport@springest.com and include the error and the admin-url.

ID	Failure (error message)	Reasons & Solutions
1	Importer::TrainingAlreadyImported: Importer::TrainingAlreadyImported	• The training has already been imported. This means their are duplicate courses in the XML. Please check if there are courses with similar ID or names in your XML. The importer expects only unique courses (unique ID's)
2	NoMethodError: undefined method `force_encoding' for nil:NilClass	This means that one of the fields containing text (Description, Runtime, PriceInfo) is empty. Please check the course in your XML and see what field is missing text.
3	ActiveRecord::RecordNotSaved: Failed to replace starting_dateplaces because one or more of the new records could not be saved.	The information added in the XML is not correct or invalid. Please make sure The format is valid according to the .XSD-document A correct date is given (always). (yyyy-mm-dd) A location is given (always)