Thanks Josh for the help.
The problem I am having is that there is an expediated way to upload grades into gradebook that works first from downloading an Excel form that captures temporary IDs, which are formed after some algorithm of "Participant" + whole number. You then use this worksheet to enter your grading information that you then upload into Moodle's gradebook. The IDs (ie Participant + nr) that gets produced are only temporary, so I cannot use them from assignment to assignment because I have a full off-line grading tool I have built and works off one main ID that is always permanent through the semester (or even spanning multiple semesters).
In addition, the strategy Moodle 2.4 uses with this option does not work at all for me because it forces you to only use comma delimited files. Within the feedback I generate to students, there can be commas as part of my narrative - this hangs the import process for CSV files - so I need to use tab delimiters, which are not accessible from that interface. When I generate feedback, I have automated algorithms that wrap my commentary with HTML tags, and there can be regular paragraph type narrative with all the expected punctuation one uses when writing - doing this produces easy-to-ready feedback, which is the point. (As an aside, in my recent experiments with Moodle 2.4, I have discovered that what I can have in my feedback will create parsing problems for the Moodle algorithms - eg, I discovered that ellipses and double-quotes makes the import function hang. Therefore, in my grading tool, I now have a little alert that is displayed if I forget and use either mark in my narrative.)
There is a more full way to do this I discovered by working directly in the gradebook. While I can successfully upload everything, and set mapping between the fields I have in my grading tool with Moodle grade book fields, as well as set the delimiter to tab, it would be so much easier if the expedited approach could be modified to do the same thing by making two simple adjustments: allowing settings to be made that set the key field (ie for user ID), which isn't a temporary identity, and set the delimiter.
I need to do all my grading outside of Moodle (or any LMS) because I am also developing methods that leverage new learning analytics to support more meaningful grading, monitoring student progress, and allow me a means to leverage technology to generate a more personal experience for the students by capturing specific things they do and incorporating that into my feedback. It would be nice to share my approaches so that they could be integrated into Moodle or other LMS, as I see that the present state of LA is still in its infancy as it is being currently used here. I don't get the impression though anyone is really interested.
-George