Forum Discussion

JessicaStalling's avatar
JessicaStalling
Qrew Member
7 years ago

I want to be able to load a list of names into a course by using excel, is that possible?

excel

5 Replies

  • MCFNeil's avatar
    MCFNeil
    Qrew Captain
    Yes, if you have the list in excel you can do an import into your child table.

    I'm going to assume you have 3 tables.
    Courses
    Students
    Enrollments

    Each Course and Student will have many enrollments.  This basically will connect your two tables.

    Then you import your names into the enrollment table, and connect them to the student and course.

    If you have more details I can provide more guidance, but I had to guess a lot.
    • JessicaStalling's avatar
      JessicaStalling
      Qrew Member
      Ok. I only have 2 tables, courses and participants (students). I am hoping to click on the "participants" option in the course and be able to upload an excel spreadsheet of my roster. I am trying to avoid having to go in one by one. Do I need to make another table for enrollments and then it will automatically connect it to the course? Along with all the course info that I have uploaded? 

      Maybe if I explain what I need it will help. :) We conduct leadership programs for military groups as well as corporations. We receive a list of up to 30 participants for each class with their emails so that we can send precourse work. What we are needing is a system to upload the scheduled courses and have the rosters, with all pertinent info saved within that course. We often need reports on certain levels of the course or what customer the course was provided for, such as Air Force, Army National Guard, Xator corporation etc. Or may need reports on all the classes for the year for a certain branch. We may also need to find something with only limited info, such as a participants name or what month they took the course. We are trying to find a way to not only store all our info, but also be able to pull certain reports quickly and easily. I am just now diving into this system and it seems it be useful for what we need. Any help you can provide will be greatly appreciated!!! 
  • This is worth explaining in detail. The classic way to model student registrations or enrollments in courses is to use three tables:
    1. Courses
    2. Students
    3. Enrollments
    The tables are related as follows:

    Courses -< Enrollments >- Students

    In other words, Courses have multiple Enrollments and Students have multiple Enrollments. When documenting parent child relationships it is best to use a "crow's foot" extending from the parent to the child table instead of an arrow as an argument can be made for the arrow to point in either direction (depending on what you consider the arrow pointing to). When configured in this fashion, the Enrollments table is called a Join table as it relates which student is taking which course.

    Now consider this sample data:

    Students
    [Record ID#], [Name], [Email]
    1, Larry, larry@example.com
    2, Moe, moe@example.com
    4, Curly, curly@example.com

    Courses
    [Record ID#], [Name], [Hours]
    2, Sweeping, 10
    3, Plumbing, 12
    5, Painting, 15

    Enrollments
    [Record ID#], [Related Student], [Related Course], [Date], [Location]
    11, 1, 2, 1/17/17, Des Moinse
    12, 1, 3, 2/14/17, New York
    13, 2, 3, 1/15/17, Chicago
    15, 4, 3, 3/15/17, Boston
    20, 4, 5, 5/23/17, Los Angeles

    If I haven't made a typo, this table data corresponds to the following narrative information:

    Larry took Sweeping on 1/17/17 in Des Moines
    Larry took Plumbing on 2/14/17 in New York
    Moe   took Plumbing on 1/15/17 in Chicago
    Curly took Plumbing on 3/15/17 in Boston
    Curly took Painting on 5/23/17 in Los Angeles

    Note that: 

    [Name]
    and [Email] are unique properties of Students;
    [Name]
    and [Hours] are unique properties of Courses; and
    [Date] and [Location] are unique properties of Enrollments.

    In our case the Join table Enrollments has its own fields [Date] and [Location]. However, in a simpler situation a Join table may only have the two "related" fields if we were not tracking any further detail about the enrollment other than which student took which course.

    Note that the [Record ID#] values for each of the three tables are not relevant to the relationships of which student took which course. Also note there are gaps in our [Record ID#] values as the result of deletions or perhaps that some students or courses are no longer active so we don't have to keep all records in an active context. The only thing that is important in regard to the [Record ID#] values is that the [Related Student] and [Related Course] consistently point to the correct record.

    Now let's say a new Student (say Shemp) comes along or a new Course (say Barbering) is added. When this student or course is imported into a table a new [Record ID#] is created in the appropriate table representing this new entity. If you are importing new registration information (say Shemp took Barbering on 5/6/17 in Detroit) you don't know at the time of the import what values  to assign to the fields [Related Student] and [Related Course] in the Enrollment table because the enrollment may be referencing a new Student or a new Course which was simply assigned a [Record ID#] value seemingly at random. To get around this difficulty it is common to create key fields in each of the tables that uniquely identify each record by an ID that has a meaning outside of QuickBase. Consider this such schema:

    Students
    [Student ID], [Name], [Email]
    L120, Larry, larry@example.com
    M345, Moe, moe@example.com
    C446, Curly, curly@example.com

    Courses
    [Course ID], [Name], [Hours]
    SWP101, Sweeping, 10
    PLM201, Plumbing, 12
    PNT101, Painting, 15

    Enrollments
    [Record ID#], [Related Student], [Related Course], [Date], [Location]
    11, L120, SWP101, 1/17/17, Des Moinse
    12, L120, PLM201, 2/14/17, New York
    13, M345, PLM201, 1/15/17, Chicago
    15, C446, PLM201, 3/15/17, Boston
    20, C446PNT101, 5/23/17, Los Angeles

    Now if the new student Shemp (with a Student ID of S987) registered for a new course Barbering 301 (with course ID of BRB301) on 5/6/17 in Detroit we could import the following enrollment data and the relationships among the three tables would be appropriately created:

    S987, BRB301, 5/6/17, Detroit

    Sometimes instead of created a new key field such as [Student ID] it may be more convenient to use some other unique identifier for a student such as [Email] or [Phone].

    Now you may be wondering why I didn't create a key field for the Enrollment table. In a lot of cases you may not need a pinpoint reference to a Join table record because you will never be referencing an enrollment without already having a specific student and course in context. But if you had a lot of enrollments and needed to reference and manage them you may well create a special key field for the enrollment table that somehow encoded the enrollment's [Date] or [Location] information and had meaning outside of QuickBase. Perhaps something like this:

    Enrollments
    [Enrollment Key], [Related Student], [Related Course], [Date], [Location]
    DM011717, L120, SWP101, 1/17/17, Des Moinse
    NY021417, L120, PLM201, 2/14/17, New York
    CH011517, M345, PLM201, 1/15/17, Chicago
    BN031517, C446, PLM201, 3/15/17, Boston
    LA052317, C446, PNT101, 5/23/17, Los Angeles


    Well I hoped this information helps you.