Item Ids in Cirrus

This article explains how Item IDs work in Cirrus and will give some examples on how to use this to your benefit.

Questions in Cirrus have one unique identifier: the item ID. This is shown in all tables where questions are displayed, whether you are looking at a single item, a list of questions in your collection or whether you are creating your assessment. 

In this article we will look at:

• An example and format of the Item ID
• The CirrusID prefix
• The Cirrus ID counter and sorting on ID
• Version and Revision numbers

Example and format of the Item ID

The Cirrus Item ID is an autogenerated, unique ID for your Items. This is comprised of a customisable prefix based on the collection it is in, a number and the version of the Item. Highlights of this ID:

• The CirrusID format is: *CollectionPrefix-CollectionCounter.Version.ItemRevision*.
• The visible part to Authors is CollectionPrefix-CollectionCounter, example HVCA-445.
• The prefix is generated by Cirrus but can be set by the collection authors.
• The item ID is a searchable  value for each Item and must be unique across your environment.
• The External ID is editable by authors per question.
• TIP: our import from Excel file can greatly help to set Item IDs.

The CirrusID prefix 

The CirrusID prefix is based upon a custom value entered by the collection author:

• It will be prepended to all IDs
• It must be unique across all collections of your environment
• It is limited to uppercase latin letters [A-Z] and digits [0-9] and can start with digit.
• Minimal length: 1 maximum length: 10
• Re-generated when user changes Collection's prefix
• As this is editable, collection authors are freely able to change the prefix.

The Cirrus ID Counter and sorting on ID

The Cirrus ID Counter will start from 1 and incremented by 1 each time when new item in this collection is created. It cannot be reset and even if an item get deleted the next generated item will still have incremented ID. Example: HVA-1, HVA-2.

Please note that Cirrus sorts Item ID's as text strings. For example:

The CirrusID version number

• Different for each version and is incremented by 1
• Sowiso Mathematical questions and sections pages don't have versions.

The CirrusID revision number

• Different for each revision and is incremented by 1
• Sowiso questions and sections pages don't have revisions - show revision 1 for them.