Copy Atomic Assessments Using Canvas Course Copy

Your Canvas assignments, pages, and modules copy with the course right away. Your Atomic Assessments content is built in the new course in a separate step that Atomic Assessments runs in the background, often after Canvas already shows the copy as Completed. Until that step finishes, opening an assessment shows a Content Pending screen. In most cases you only need to wait and reload. If the content never arrives, the same screen is where an instructor finishes the import by hand

How Course Copy Works

Canvas does not copy Atomic Assessments content on its own. It cannot see inside your assessments. It only sees the Canvas assignment or page that launches them.

Instead, Canvas and Atomic Assessments hand off in two steps:

Export/Copy a Canvas Course. When you start a copy, Canvas asks Atomic Assessments for a package of the source course's assessments, settings, and item banks.
Import. When the Canvas migration finishes, Canvas hands that package back to Atomic Assessments in the new course, and Atomic Assessments rebuilds your content there.

Because the second step runs in the background, Canvas can show Completed while your assessments are still being built. A large course can take several minutes longer. While it runs, the Content Pending screen shows its progress.

If the handoff does not happen, the new course has the Canvas assignments but no assessment content behind them. Opening one shows a different Content Pending screen that lets an instructor connect the content manually. See Content Pending Screens below.

Before You Copy

Confirm the source course contains Atomic Assessments content. A course with no assessments has nothing to hand off.
If you plan to use Select specific content, include the assignments, pages, or modules that launch your assessments. An assessment only copies if its Canvas item was selected.
To control whether the new course gets editable copies or a read-only version of your content, see Choose Copies or Read-Only Content for Course Copy. Set this in the source course before you copy.

Using Import Course Content

Use this method when the destination course already exists, such as a new term's empty shell.

Open the new course and go to Settings > Import Course Content.
Set Content Type to Copy a Canvas Course.
Search for and select the source course.
Choose All content or Select specific content.
Adjust events and due dates if you need to.
Click Import.
When Canvas shows Completed, open Atomic Assessments in the new course. If you see a banner reading "A background import is currently in progress", or an assessment opens to a Content Pending screen, the import is still running. Wait a few minutes and reload.

All content brings every Atomic Assessments assessment in the source course, along with course settings, setting presets, proctoring presets, grade scales, tags, and custom CSS.

Select specific content brings only the assessments attached to the assignments, pages, and modules you selected. Canvas tells Atomic Assessments exactly which items came across.

Using Copy this Course

Use this method when the destination course does not exist yet.

Open the source course and go to Settings > Copy this Course.
Name the new course and set the term and start and end dates.
Choose All content or Select specific content.
Click Create Course.
When Canvas shows Completed, open Atomic Assessments in the new course. As with Import Course Content, a Content Pending screen or an import banner means the background import is still running. Wait a few minutes and reload.

Atomic Assessments behaves the same way here as it does with Import Course Content. Canvas runs the same migration underneath. The only difference is that Canvas creates the destination course for you.

Using Blueprint Courses

Blueprints behave differently from the two methods above, because they run repeatedly against courses that already contain your content.

The first sync to an associated course behaves like a full course copy. Every assessment is imported into the child course in the background, so instructors in that course can see Content Pending screens until the import finishes.

Later syncs are selective. Canvas tells Atomic Assessments which assignments, pages, and modules changed, and Atomic Assessments updates the matching assessments in place rather than creating duplicates. Assessment settings are updated as well. Assessments that are new to the child course import the same way as a first sync and can briefly show Content Pending.

Note: After a sync, instructor edits to items in a child course can be overwritten by a later sync. If an instructor needs a local variation, have them duplicate the assessment and edit the duplicate.

When a Sync Does Not Trigger

Because of the way the Canvas Import APIs work, changes made only in Atomic Assessments will not always trigger the Sync prompt for the blueprint. Canvas determines what needs syncing by watching Canvas objects, so if you change a question, a passage, or an activity's contents and nothing changes on the Canvas side, Canvas may not offer the prompt at all.

Creating a new assessment in Atomic Assessments does create a matching Canvas assignment, so that reliably triggers the prompt.

If a sync will not trigger, you can either make a small edit to the corresponding Canvas assignment in the blueprint course and then sync, or use the Atomic Assessments Push feature to send updated content from a master course to selected courses directly.

What Copies and What Does Not

Once the import finishes, a Canvas course copy brings across:

Assessments and their items
Assessment settings, including attempts, time limits, feedback timing, and scoring rules
Due, unlock, and lock dates, subject to the date-shifting options you chose in Canvas
Proctoring settings and proctoring presets
Setting presets, grade scales, tags, item bank content, and course-level custom CSS

A Canvas course copy does not bring across student attempts, submissions, scores, or grades, and it does not bring across student-specific assignment overrides.

Content Pending Screens

There are two versions of the Content Pending screen, and they mean different things. The first shows the background import's progress. The second appears when no import arrived and lets an instructor connect the content by hand.

The Import Is Still Running

The screen reads "This assignment is being imported, it may take a little while."

This is expected. You opened the assessment before the background import completed. Wait a few minutes and reload the page. The screen updates as the import progresses, moving from Waiting to start to Importing content to Import complete. You may also see a banner on your assessment list reading "A background import is currently in progress. Some assessments may not be available until it is complete."

Two variations can appear:

"The import is taking an unexpectedly long time, please check back later." This appears about 30 minutes after the import started. It usually still finishes. The screen offers a link to reset the import status if you would rather start over.
"There was an error while importing this content." The import failed, and the error is listed below the message. Click Click here to start over, then run the copy again or use the recovery options described below. Contact Atomic Jolt support if it fails a second time.

Atomic Assessments Cannot Find Your Content

The screen reads "It looks like you copied a course, but Atomic Assessments isn't able to find its data yet."

This means the handoff did not happen. Canvas copied your assignments, but Atomic Assessments never received the matching content package. This most often follows a copy across Canvas instances, or a migration that Canvas did not report back.

From this screen, an instructor or admin can connect the content in one of two ways:

Course Selection lets you pick the original source course from the list and import from it. Atomic Assessments suggests courses you teach and courses in this assignment's copy history.
Version Import lets you paste a published Version Key from the source course. Use this when the correct course is not listed, including when the source course is in a different Canvas instance.

Content imported through either option comes in as a read-only version of the original.

Note: Students cannot resolve this screen. A student who opens an assessment that has not imported sees the Content Pending heading with no way to act on it. An instructor or admin must complete the import, or wait for the background import to finish.

Checking Import Status

Open Atomic Assessments, click the three-dot menu, select Content Manager, and open the Versions tab. Imported Versions lists every import into the course, along with its status, what it brought in, and any errors.

Status banners only report on imports from the last two hours. An older import that never finished stops being reported, so check the Versions tab rather than relying on the banner.

Troubleshooting

"Canvas assignment missing" appears after a copy

Canvas created the assignment in the new course but did not pass the link back to Atomic Assessments. The assessment exists and the Canvas assignment exists, but they are not connected, so grades will not pass back.

Atomic Assessments repairs this automatically once you save the assignment in Atomic Assessments. If the warning remains after saving, have a Canvas admin complete the Atomic Jolt Canvas authorization, then reload the page.

No Atomic Assessments content copied at all

Confirm the source course actually contains Atomic Assessments content. If it has none, nothing copies from the tool.
Confirm the copy included the assignments, pages, or modules that launch your assessments. With Select specific content, an assessment only copies if its Canvas item was selected.
Check Content Manager > Versions > Imported Versions in the new course for a failed import.
If assessments open to the "isn't able to find its data yet" screen, use Course Selection or Version Import on that screen to connect the content.

A second copy brought less content than expected

After a course has received one full copy, later Canvas imports bring only the content Canvas reports as copied. To force a full re-import, open the destination course's Atomic Assessments Settings, go to Course copy & import, and select Import all Atomic Assessments content on next Canvas import. Then run the Canvas copy again.