Courses Associated to Blueprint Course via API not Synced

Question

A few months ago, I associated several hundred courses to a blueprint course using the Canvas API. While all of the courses were successfully associated with the blueprint course, I have since discovered that only some of the newly associated courses synced with it. Consequently, most of the newly associated courses populated with the blueprint course's content, but several others show that they are associated with the blueprint but they remain empty course shells.

I decided to experiment on an individual course by disassociating it and re-associating it with the API. When I did this, nothing changed. For some reason, it still would not sync like many of the other courses. However, when I disassociated it and re-associated it using the UI instead of the API, it immediately synced that course and all the other previously un-synced courses with the blueprint. After that, all of the associated courses populated the blueprint content correctly. Is there any reason why some of the courses would not sync with the blueprint course when added with the API? Is there something I can do moving forward to ensure this doesn't happen again?

melodyc_lam · Accepted Answer

@JoelJustice This is actually the intended behavior of the Update associated courses API endpoint. Once you associate the courses to the blueprint, you have to start the sync through the "Begin migration" call — associating the blueprint through the API doesn't automatically start a sync.

The only times that a blueprint sync is done automatically is when you associate courses through the API or when you associate courses to a blueprint through a SIS Import.

Hope this helps!

melodyc_lam · Accepted Answer

Oh, sorry, associating courses through UI and SIS import will trigger an automatic sync — I just noticed that typo.

For blueprinting through the API, you need two API calls (one to associate, one to initiate a sync).