LON-CAPA Help

If you will be creating several slots you may prefer to create them by uploading a comma separated value (CSV) file containing slot configuration information with one line of data per slot. An easy way to create this type of file is to use a spreadsheet application such as Microsoft Excel, and save the file as a Text (CSV) file. If you use a text editor directly to create the file, you should use double quotes around any values which themselves contain a comma (e.g., list of proctor ids).

To upload a file press the Upload Slot List button on top of the page. On the first page, select the file with the slot data to upload by pressing the Browse button. There is an option to ignore the first line. This is useful when the first line of your comma delimited file consists of headers for each field. You can also upload space and tab delimited file by changing the type combo box. Press Upload to upload the file.

Once uploaded, you will be prompted to identify the contents of each column in your CSV data. The following fields are supported:

• Slot name

• Type of slot

• Start Time of slot

• End Time of slot

• Reservation Start Time

• Reservation End Time

• Message when reservation changed

• IP or DNS restriction

• List of proctor ids

• Slot Description

• Maximum number of reservations

• Resource Restriction

• Date range of slot exclusion

• Secret word proctor uses to validate

• Sections slot is restricted to

• Users slot is restricted to

The following fields: "Slot name", "Type of slot", "Start Time of slot" and "End Time of slot" are required.

Format restrictions for the required fields are as follows:

• A Slot name may only contain letters, numbers and underscores.

• The Type of slot must be either preassigned or schedulable_student.

• The four Time fields: Start Time, End Time, Reservation Start Time, Reservation End Time permit a variety of formats (for example: YYYYMMDDHHMMSS and MM/DD/YYYY HH:MM:SS)

Format requirements for the optional fields are as follows:

• "Message when reservation changed" can be: only_student, student_and_user_notes_screen or none.

• "IP or DNS restriction" is a comma-separated list. If a particular IP restriction is: deny access from, prepend ! to the item. Individual IP/DNS items can have one of the following formats:
  1. a range, e.g, 35.8.3.[34-56]

  2. partial IP with wildcard, e.g., 35.8.*

  3. domain or subnet: e.g., *.msu.edu

  4. single IP: e.g., 127.0.0.1

  5. single DNS name, e.g., some.name.com

• "Unique IP each student" can be yes

• "List of proctor ids" is a comma separated list of username:domain for users who will proctor.

• "Maximum number of reservations" is a positive integer

• "Resource Restriction" is the unique resource identifier (also known as a 'symb'). A list of unique identifiers in a course is available from: Course Editor > Content Utilities > List Resource Identifiers.

• "Date range of slot exclusion" contains two dates separated by a comma. The second date/time must post-date the first date/time. Permitted formats for each date/time are the same as for the four time fields.

• "Sections slot is restricted to" is a comma separated list of course sections

• "Users slot is restricted to" is a comma separated list of users (each user is in the format username:domain)