Proposal: CSV Student Import for Application Phase

[Mtze]

Proposal: CSV Student Import for Application Phase

Motivation

Currently, students can only enter a course through the self-service application flow — they must individually fill out and submit an application form, which is then reviewed by instructors. However, there are scenarios where the list of participants is already known upfront:

• Students are pre-selected through an external process (e.g., TUMonline, manual selection)
• A course does not require a formal application process but still uses the application phase as the entry point into the course phase graph
• Students need to be migrated from another system or a previous semester
• Large mandatory courses where individual applications are unnecessary overhead

In these cases, instructors need a way to bulk-import students directly into the application phase without requiring each student to submit an application manually.

1. CSV Upload for Application Phase

• Instructors and PROMPT_Admins should be able to upload a CSV file containing student data to an application phase
• The CSV should at minimum contain identifying information (e.g., matriculation number, university login, email) to match or create student records
• Uploaded students should be placed into the application phase as pending applications. If the application phase has auto-accept enabled in its settings, imported students are automatically accepted — consistent with how self-service applications behave.
• Clear feedback on the import result: how many students were matched, created, skipped, or failed

2. Matching & Conflict Handling

• Imported students should be matched against existing student records (by matriculation number or university login)
• If a student already exists in PROMPT, link to the existing record rather than creating a duplicate
• If a student does not yet exist, create a new student record from the CSV data
• If a student has already applied to the same phase, the import should skip or flag the duplicate rather than overwriting the existing application
• Provide a preview/dry-run step before committing the import so instructors can review matches and resolve issues

3. CSV Format & Validation

• Define a clear, documented CSV format with required and optional columns
• Provide a downloadable CSV template from the UI
• Validate the file on upload: check for missing required fields, malformed data, and duplicates within the file
• Support common encodings and delimiter variations (UTF-8, semicolon vs. comma)