A course start date is a course setting which affects the display of logs and the dates for weekly format sections in a course. A course end date sets the expected end of the course and affects the display of logs. Conduit adds a feature option that allows the course end date to trigger the closure of a course; to make it unavailable for students at that time.
Course start and end date can be found within the course settings under the Course > Course Administration > Edit Settings. In Conduit, you must first map the fields for startdate and enddate found under Conduit > Settings > Mappings > Course.
You do not need to set a start to use an end nor an end to use a start; the settings are independent of each other.
Tip:
In case you missed that above, while the core course end date does not close the course automatically, Conduit has an optional setting under Conduit -> Settings -> General settings under Courses that tells Conduit to close courses when the end date time is reached. The setting is “Hide after course end date”.
Date formats
Once you have mapped the desired course date fields, Conduit is ready to process this information. However, you will need to send the right formatted date information to Conduit. In Conduit, the information you send for dates must be in Unix time format.
For example, The date January 1st, 1970 Midnight GMT is 0 and the date of June 1st, 2018 at midnight GMT has the Unix timestamp of 1527811200, the number of seconds since 0.
There are many online converters where you can plugin in the date and time in order to retrieve the Unix time value. You can use any of the tools that are available, but here are a few for your convenience.