# Matching course equivalencies

The **Course Equivalencies** tab is where the actual articulation work happens. For every course on the package, Mapademics shows a ranked list of candidate equivalents from your own home-institution catalog. You review the candidates, **pin** the right one, and move on.

This tab is used on every package, whether it was created from a transcript or by hand.

***

## What you're looking at

The header tells you what you're doing: *Select courses from **{transferring institution}** to match against your home institution courses*.

Below the header are two **sub-tabs**:

* **Ready for matching (N)** — courses whose candidates have already been scored. These are the rows you actually work on.
* **Pending courses (N)** — courses Mapademics is still scoring. They flip to *Ready for matching* on their own within a few seconds.

The main table sits under the **Ready for matching** sub-tab. Each row is one source course, with Mapademics's status in the **Status** column. The table is split into two color-coded halves:

* **Transfer Course** (cream-banded) — the source course from the transferring institution: code, title, credits, and the period it was taken in.
* **Home Course Match** (lavender-banded) — Mapademics's current best home-institution candidate for that source course. Even on rows that aren't pinned yet, this column shows the top-scoring candidate so you can scan for likely matches without expanding every row.

Above the table:

* A **search** field filters by code or title.
* A **course count**.
* **📌 Pin All to Best Match** — a single dynamic button at the top right. When nothing is selected it pins every row's top candidate. The moment you check one or more row checkboxes, the label changes to **📌 Pin N to Best Match** — same button, scoped to your selection.
* **Bulk Actions ⌄** — *only on manual packages.* Contains bulk-delete for the rows you've checked. Hidden on transcript-sourced packages because deletion happens through **Exclude course** on the Transcript Review tab instead.
* **+ Add Courses** (top right) — *only on manual packages.* On transcript-sourced packages, the course list comes from the transcript, so this button is hidden. To add a course on a transcript-sourced package, use **+ Manually add course to transcript** on the **Transcript Review** tab instead.

Each row also carries a small **flag icon** at the right of the **Home Course Match** column — that's the per-row toggle for the [Flag and Reviewer note](#flag-and-reviewer-note) feature described below.

***

## The kinds of rows you'll see

Most rows arrive ready to pin. A few will need other treatment. Here's what each kind looks like and what to do.

### Ready to review

Status badge: **Review** (yellow). The Home Course Match column shows the top candidate's code and title even before you've pinned it — so for many rows you can decide in a glance whether to pin the suggestion or open the row for a closer look.

Click the chevron to expand the row and see the full **Candidate Matches** section. Above the candidate list sit two row-level actions:

* **🟢 Select Manual Match** — opens a dialog to pick any course from your home-institution library as an equivalent, including ones Mapademics didn't surface as candidates. See [Selecting a manual match](#selecting-a-manual-match) below.
* **🔴 Mark as No Equivalent** — sets the row to *No Equivalent* without picking any candidate. See [No equivalent](#no-equivalent) below.

Each candidate card includes:

* The **percentage match score** as a large green pill on the left, plus a horizontal *XX% match* bar to the right.
* The candidate's code, title, credits, and the catalog year it comes from.
* A small **type icon** at the top left — a 🤖-style icon for Mapademics-surfaced candidates, a 👤 person icon plus a **Manual match** pill for candidates you picked via [Select Manual Match](#selecting-a-manual-match).
* Three quick signals — **Credit Match**, **Level Match**, **Year Proximity** — each with a green check (positive), an amber dash (partial, for Year Proximity), or a red X (negative). See [Match signals](/reference/match-signals.md).
* A **Match Justification** — one or two sentences Mapademics wrote when it scored the candidate, explaining why it's a plausible equivalent. Read this; it's often the deciding factor when two candidates have similar scores.
* A **flag icon** for the [Flag and Reviewer note](#flag-and-reviewer-note) feature.
* A **📌 Pin** button to lock this candidate in as the equivalent.

{% hint style="info" %}
**The percentage isn't the only thing that matters.** A 94% match with a missing **Level Match** signal can be a worse choice than an 81% match with all three signals checked. Read the justification and look at the signals before pinning.
{% endhint %}

### Pinned

Status badge: **Pinned** (blue, with a pin icon). The Home Course Match column shows the pinned course's code and title.

This row is done from this tab's perspective. To change the pin, expand the row and pick a different candidate, or click the pinned candidate's pin button again to unpin.

### No equivalent

Status badge: **No Equivalent**.

Use this when you've decided a transferring course truly has nothing equivalent at your institution — set it explicitly so the decision is part of the record, instead of just leaving the row unpinned.

To mark a row, expand it and click **Mark as No Equivalent** at the bottom of the candidates list. The row's status flips to No Equivalent and it stops asking for a pin. The package can complete with No Equivalent rows on it; they show up on the report as decisions made.

To undo, expand the row and pin a candidate normally.

### No candidates found

Status badge: **No Match**. The Home Course Match column shows a **Request a new course** link.

Mapademics scored every course in your catalog and couldn't find anything plausible. Two paths:

* **Request a new course** opens a small dialog that submits a request to Mapademics asking us to add a fitting course (or improve what we have). When the request is fulfilled, the row will move back into Review with new candidates.
* **Delete the row** if you've decided the course doesn't belong on this evaluation.

### Still being scored

Courses still being scored by Mapademics live on the **Pending courses** sub-tab instead of the main table — that's where you'll see them. They appear there briefly after a course is added, then flip to **Ready for matching** within a few seconds. While a course is pending, you can't pin it. The pin buttons stay disabled until scoring finishes, then enable themselves automatically.

### Something went wrong

A red **Error** badge with a small retry icon next to it. Click the retry icon to try again. If it persists, reach out via [Support](/reference/support.md).

***

## Selecting a manual match

Sometimes the right equivalent isn't in Mapademics's candidate list — maybe the content overlap is real but the score didn't surface it, or the course you'd pick lives in a corner of your catalog Mapademics didn't reach for. **Select Manual Match** lets you reach into the full home-institution library and pick anything.

Click **🟢 Select Manual Match** at the top of an expanded row's Candidate Matches section. The **Pick a home course** dialog opens with:

* A **search field** by code or title.
* An **All Credits** dropdown to filter to a specific credit value.
* A paginated table over your entire home catalog: *Institution, Code, Course Title, Period, Credits.*

Click any row to select it. The dialog closes, the course appears in the candidate list with a **Manual match** pill, and it's automatically pinned as the active equivalent.

A few things to know:

* **Multiple manuals coexist.** You can run **Select Manual Match** more than once on the same row — each pick stays in the candidate list. They appear alongside the Mapademics-surfaced candidates.
* **You can switch back.** A manual match doesn't lock you in; you can pin any of the auto-surfaced candidates (or another manual one) at any time. The previously pinned manual stays in the candidate set so you can revisit.
* **Manual matches show up everywhere.** On the **Approved Equivalencies** page, on the **Report** tab, and in the PDF, a manual match is visibly distinct — usually marked with the same "Manual match" indicator you see here.

This is the right tool when Mapademics is wrong, when your institution's articulation policy points at a specific course, or when you're encoding a published articulation agreement and need exact control over the pick.

***

## Flag and Reviewer note

Sometimes you want to pin an equivalence *and* leave a written note about it — a caveat, an explanation, a question for a teammate. The **flag** + **Reviewer note** feature is for that.

You'll see a small flag icon in two places:

* On the **Home Course Match** cell of each row (next to the trash icon on manual packages, at the right of the cell otherwise).
* On every candidate card inside the expanded row.

Clicking either turns the flag **orange/filled** to mark the candidate as flagged. The two places are synced — they reflect the same flag on the same candidate.

When you flag a candidate, a **🚩 Reviewer note** section appears at the bottom of its card with a free-form textarea (*"Add a note about this match…"*). Type whatever you want — registrar context, articulation rationale, the reason you overrode a higher-scoring candidate, a question for review. The note is saved with the candidate; click the flag again to unflag and the textarea is hidden (the note is preserved if you re-flag later).

A flagged candidate's note is also visible on the **Approved Equivalencies** page and in the report PDF — useful for downstream readers who weren't in the room when the decision was made.

The flag is independent of the pin: you can flag any candidate (the pinned one or an alternative), and a flagged-but-not-pinned candidate keeps its flag for the next time someone reviews the row.

***

## Pinning in bulk

When you trust the top suggestions across the board and want to apply them all at once, click **📌 Pin All to Best Match** at the top right. Every row in **Ready for matching** gets its top-ranked candidate pinned in one operation.

For a more selective bulk pin, check specific rows with the checkbox column. The button label updates in place: now it reads **📌 Pin N to Best Match**, where *N* is the number you've selected. Same button — same place — different scope. Click it to pin just your selection.

You can audit and override individually afterward; bulk-pinning is just a starting point.

On manual packages, the **Bulk Actions ⌄** dropdown next to the Pin button gives you bulk-delete for the selected rows. (On transcript-sourced packages it's hidden — there, deletion happens on the **Transcript Review** tab via **Exclude course** instead.)

***

## Adding more courses — manual packages only

On manual packages, click **+ Add Courses** at the top right to open the catalog picker. You can:

* **Search** by code or title.
* Filter by **institution** — defaults to the package's transferring institution, but you can switch to any institution your team has access to, or browse across all of them.
* Filter by **period** (academic year or term) — periods with available courses are marked with a green dot. The picker auto-snaps to the most recent period that has data.
* Filter by **credits** — 1 through 6.

Select one or more rows and click **Add Courses** to add them. They appear on the **Pending courses** sub-tab for a few seconds while Mapademics scores candidates, then move into **Ready for matching**.

If a specific course on the picker has incorrect metadata in our records, use the small request-change icon at the right of its row to submit a correction. If your search turns up nothing for what you're looking for, a **Can't find it? Request this course** link appears, which submits a request to add the course to our records.

On a **transcript-based package, this button is hidden**. Course content comes from the transcript itself, and additions happen on the **Transcript Review** tab via **+ Manually add course to transcript**.

***

## Removing a course — manual packages only

On manual packages, a red **trash** icon at the end of any row removes the course from this package. A confirm dialog appears — the course's matching data is lost; the course itself stays in the catalog.

On **transcript-based packages, the per-row trash icon is hidden** for the same reason **+ Add Courses** is: the course list belongs to the transcript. To drop a course from a transcript-based package, use **Exclude course** on the row's `...` menu over on the **Transcript Review** tab — the row stays on the transcript as a record but disappears from the equivalencies list.

***

## When you're done

When every row is either **Pinned** or marked **No Equivalent**, the package is complete. The Report tab will show a banner counting any courses that still need a pin — that's the smoking gun if you think you're done but the report isn't ready. See [The articulation report](/working-with-packages/the-report.md).

***

## Next steps

* [The articulation report](/working-with-packages/the-report.md)
* [Match signals](/reference/match-signals.md)
* [Package stages](/reference/package-stages.md)


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