Does anyone use the "Import from Archive File" in Site Info

[Charles Severance]

Hi all,

I am thinking of adding support for import and export of Common Cartridges to Site Info (currently under Lessons -> More Tools)

In doing this, I am planning on hiding the existing “Import from Archive File” from SIte Info.

I am not proposing removing the “Import from Site” (a.k.a. Site Copy) just Import from Archive File. See attached scraan shot.

If I do not hear from anyone using this feature, I will keep the feature but hide it in the UI and then add the Import and Export CC features.

So if you use this feature - please let me know.

/Chuck

P.S. Site Copy (Import from Site) is a wonderful feature and will be there forever - do not worry.

[Austin]

The "Site Info -> Import from Archive file" does not work in our 22.5 instance.  I haven't had a chance to try it on a vanilla install, but in our custom install, It displays an error 

"Alert: Please choose a valid archive file to import."

and catalina.out does not show any detailed error.

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[bernardo.garcia]

Hi,

I think it could make sense, it's surely nice to see backup or import/export options being improved.

I brought this question to the S2U group and they came with a couple of things that should probably be considered with this change:

- Performance: one of them mentioned one attempt at CC import threw down their platform. If more users will be able to run it (which is good) we need to be careful with that.

- Tool selection: is it planned to have a similar screen to the "Import from Site" feature? For example, they want to be able to do a "Lessons only" import (so it works more or less like before inside that tool) or the opposite (i.e. selecting only Assignments would be lighter and faster).

- What are the plans (if any) for the Import from Archive File admin tool?

Thanks a lot and regards.

[Andrea Schmidt]

I did some testing around this a few years ago and was trying to get answers regarding expectations because it was not working as it should. The zip file from (admin) Site Archive would not work as an import in Site Info > Import from Archive File. I'm fairly certain that many years ago, the archive .zip file did import and have no idea when exactly it changed.

The Help Files are now showing how it actually does work:

How do I import content from an archive file?

If you export a regular cc file from Lessons, which has the .imscc extension, this will import into the site using Import from Archive File, however it is incomplete. It really seems useless as it works now.

Andrea

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[Charles Severance]

Andrea - that is super helpful.  If it just supports IMSCC and was never for the internal admin-only Site Archive (no CC) - I can just fix it.  I have kind of made it work at some point but it has bad performance issues so one must be patient - or sometimes it just blows up :)

/Chuck

[Charles Severance]

On Feb 12, 2025, at 6:41 AM, bernardo.garcia <bernard...@entornosdeformacion.com> wrote:

- Performance: one of them mentioned one attempt at CC import threw down their platform. If more users will be able to run it (which is good) we need to be careful with that.

Yes - I have seen this too - I skimmed the code and saw lots of less-than-ideal approaches that caused the Zip to be read (the slowest part of the import) multiple times

- Tool selection: is it planned to have a similar screen to the "Import from Site" feature? For example, they want to be able to do a "Lessons only" import (so it works more or less like before inside that tool) or the opposite (i.e. selecting only Assignments would be lighter and faster).

Yes - that is definitely the plan.  My overall approach is to mimic Site Copy completely or as close as I can do it.  The approach will be to run a full import into a shadow site and then start a site copy from the shadow site.   Those shadow sites will be cleaned up later.

- What are the plans (if any) for the Import from Archive File admin tool?

No immediate plans - but once things settle down, I could switch that tool to do CC+Archive exports instead of Sakai-only exports - and then we would have one format to rule them all.

Thanks.

/Chuck

[Charles Severance]

On Feb 13, 2025, at 12:17 PM, alan.regan <alan....@pepperdine.edu> wrote:

If it helps, we used the "Import from Archive File" when we originally migrated from Blackboard Learn to Sakai (circa 2009-2010). It allowed us to import the Blackboard export files into a Sakai course site. It was invaluable for that process, at least back in the day. We definitely used the .zip BB files to import into Sakai sites for our instructors (Longsight helped us massively).

We are still on Sakai 22. The 22 help instructions state, "Note: Sakai supports several import file types (e.g., IMS Common Cartridge Archives, Blackboard Archive files, etc.). However, you may need to check with your system administrator to determine the file import options currently enabled on your system and the best file format for you to use." I'm assuming extra settings or configurations are needed on the backend to add different compatibilities or acceptable files.

Alan, 

Thanks for this.  None of those features to import other formats have been removed and there are no plans to remove them.  But I am quite sure that that code would not work well with exports from those systems since those formats have almost certainly evolved.

But I do have a plan.  The idea is to make Sakai import and export work wonderfully and then any of those kinds of conversions can be built simply and quickly outside of Sakai in an easy to code and modify language.

If we take this approach of trying to build a beautiful import and export and doing conversions externally we (like with LTI) lead the market into a healthy place where your courses can be exported, converted, as shared with colleagues at other schools that use other LMSs.

It will be slow going a the beginning but the in time,  one step at a time, problem will yield and Sakai will once again show the way as it always has.

/Chuck