All data in Watershed is in the form of xAPI statements that record a learner interaction. This includes the action performed by the learner (the verb) and the thing the learner interacted with (the activity). Activities and verbs can be used in report and measure filters via Report Builder and Measure Editor.

In an ideal world, each activity and verb have exactly one identifier that is always used to identify that activity or verb. But in practice that's not always the case. Inconsistencies in the data, bugs, and changes can mean that you sometimes end up with multiple identifiers that actually should point to the same thing.

Activity and Verb aliasing provides a way for you to link these identifiers together so that multiple identifiers appear as a single activity or verb. Once an alias has been set up, all data that had previously been associated with the activity or verb id being aliased will now be associated with the alias target. In reports, it will be as though the data actually uses the alias target instead and the id being aliased will no longer exist.

Aliases apply to new data that comes in after the alias has been set up as well as existing data already in the account. Deleting an alias returns all the data to its original id, so any changes you make can be easily undone.

How to Get to Activity and Verb Aliasing

To set up an activity alias, go to DATA / Activities / Activity Aliases.

To set up a verb alias, go to DATA / Verbs.

Creating an Alias

The process for creating an alias is the same for both activities and verbs. To set up an alias for a new activity or verb, click Add Aliases.

Next search for an alias target. This is the main activity or verb id that you want to keep and attach the other activities to. If you have live data continuing to use a particular id, you should use that one as the alias target, and have the ids associated with legacy data as the aliases.

Next click Add Alias to choose an alias to add to the target.

Then search for the alias. 

After that, you can either add additional aliases to the same target, or click Done to save.

Editing an Alias

The easiest way to view or edit an existing alias is to click on the X aliased activities link in the row for that alias target.

From there you can remove an existing alias, add a new alias to the target or click Done to save.

Example of Aliasing

In this example, we will use aliasing to combine the verbs "watched" and "attended" under the "attended" verb.

This leaderboard shows the number of interactions for each verb. You've noticed that it includes both "watched" and "attended" but these mean the same to your organization and you'd like to combine them both under "attended."

After clicking Add Aliases on the Verbs page, we chose the "attended" verb to targetfor the alias:

We then added "watched" to target the "attended" verb alias:

After creating the alias it took around an hour for Watershed to completely move "watched" under "attended" (it can take even longer depending on how large your data set is.):

The alias also affected Data Search. Here's "watched" before the alias was created:

Here's "attended" before the alias was created:

Here's "watched" after the alias was created:

Here's "attended" after the alias was created:

Note that both sets of statements now appear when searching for the "attended" verb id. On the Data Search page, the name of the verb still appears like raw statement, but if you click into the statement, the id has changed to the aliased verb id: 

Note that in reports they will be combined under the name of the "attended" verb. Also the actual raw statement in your LRS will not be edited. It will just appear edited in reporting and in Data Search.