Every course already exists in one place: the university's course catalogue. If the courses also have to be typed into Excelsior before staff can register on them, that is double work, and it leads to mistakes. A course code with an extra space, an old course title or the wrong number of ECTS follows the registrations all the way into the workload account and the reports.
When Excelsior is connected to the course catalogue, the courses come from there. This happens in two ways:
- Automatically every night: New courses for your department are imported for the years that exist in Excelsior.
- Search and import: Administrators can look up a specific course and import it straight away.
The examples below use fictitious courses, departments and codes.
The courses arrive by themselves
Every night Excelsior looks up each of your years in the catalogue and imports the courses from your department that don't yet exist in Excelsior. A course with the same course code, year and term is never created twice, so the nightly import can run again and again without creating duplicates.
In practice, next year's courses are usually in place as soon as the year has been created in Excelsior and the courses have been added to the catalogue. If you use the budget module, that is exactly what lets registrations be transferred to the new year without the message that the course doesn't exist.
Search and import a course
If you need a course right away, click Add Course in the course overview and search by title or code. Choose the term and year and click Search. A small dot next to the catalogue shows whether the connection is up.
For each course, Excelsior lists every year and term the catalogue knows it from. Those that Do not exist in Excelsior are selected in advance. Those that already exist are marked Already synchronized and are not imported again. Click Import and the selected courses are created and can be searched for immediately.
Example course I
Example programmeEKS101Danish10 ECTSDepartment A
| UVA | Term | Year | Status | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ✓ | EKS101 | Fall | 2027 | Does not exist in Excelsior |
| – | EKS101 | Fall | 2026 | Already synchronized |
If a course isn't in the catalogue, an internal course for example, you can still create it with Create Manually.
What comes from the catalogue
An imported course gets its details from the catalogue, and most of them are kept up to date afterwards. The course code, year and term are what Excelsior recognises the course by, so synchronisation doesn't change them.
| Detail | Imported | Kept up to date |
|---|---|---|
| Title in Danish and English | ✓ | ✓ |
| Programme | ✓ | ✓ |
| Department | ✓ | ✓ |
| ECTS, language and faculty | ✓ | ✓ |
| Coordinator | ✓ | ✓ |
| Course code, year and term | ✓ | used to recognise the course |
The coordinator is linked to the member of staff in Excelsior if they exist there. If Excelsior doesn't already know the programme, it is created automatically.
Kept up to date
Excelsior checks every synchronised course against the catalogue again at least every 30 days. If a course has changed title, programme or coordinator, it is updated in Excelsior. Department names are updated every night, and a department managed by the catalogue can't be edited in Excelsior.
The changes carry through to the reports. When a course changes title or programme, the pivot tables are updated for the staff who have registered on it, so you don't end up with the old title in one report and the new one in another.
When a course can't be found
If the catalogue can no longer find the course, or the course code, year or term no longer match, Excelsior removes the link rather than overwrite the course with the wrong data. The course and its registrations stay where they are, but the course is now shown as Not synchronized.
When a course has a source but no link to the catalogue, Excelsior tries to find it again. This also applies to courses created manually with a source selected. If the catalogue has exactly one course with the same course code, year and term, it is linked and its details are imported.
| Course | UVA | Term | ECTS | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Example course I | EKS101 | Fall 2026 | 10 | Synchronized |
| Example course II | EKS102 | Spring 2026 | 5 | Synchronized |
| Example course III | EKS205 | Spring 2026 | 15 | Not synchronized |
A course is shown as Synchronized when it has been checked against the catalogue without errors within the last 45 days. In the course overview you can also filter on Imported and Manual.
Tips
- Create next year in good time. The nightly import only fetches courses for years that exist in Excelsior.
- Correct course details in the catalogue, not in Excelsior. The title, ECTS and the other synchronised details are overwritten at the next check if the catalogue says otherwise.
- Look into courses that are Not synchronized. Often the course code or term has changed in the catalogue, which makes it a new course.
- Use Create Manually for what the catalogue doesn't know. That way every course is still in one place.