Aeries SIS Implementation and Configuration Guide

You can use the Schoology Aeries SIS app to provision schools, terms, users, courses, and enrollments from Aeries into Schoology. You can also send grades, grading categories, and graded items from Schoology to Aeries using the course-level Aeries SIS teacher app.

The Aeries SIS app leverages the IMS Global OneRoster standard to roster data and pass grades from Schoology back to Aeries. This helps to keep roster and grade data in sync between Aeries and Schoology and it removes the need for double entry data.

Implementation Requirements

Contact your Aeries rep to obtain your API information.
Contact your Schoology representative to enable the app and assist with the implementation of the integration.
Check to make sure that no usernames contain spaces in your Aeries instance. Users with usernames that contain spaces will not sync from Aeries into Schoology.

Information Transfer

Schoology will pull the following information from Aeries:

School building information
Users (Teacher and student accounts)
Grading periods/terms
Courses, Sections, and Enrollments

All of the information listed above will be managed in Aeries and changes and updates will be transferred seamlessly to Schoology. However, it is important to note that in order to keep a consistent data model, any changes or updates made in Schoology will not be transferred to Aeries.

As an organization, you can determine the frequency of updates to users, courses, and enrollments data between the two systems.

The following options are available:

Manual - The System Admin must manually sync the Aeries SIS app in Schoology.
Scheduled - You can set the frequency of the automated sync of information from Aeries to Schoology. Select Daily unless otherwise instructed by your Schoology representative.

Schoology will push the following information to Aeries:

Grade items (Assignments & Assessments)
Grade updates (Changes to grades)
- Graded items created and updated in Aeries will not be transferred to Schoology in order to establish a master data source for all information. Schoology is the master for changes to grade data, while Aeries will remain the master for school, user, course, and enrollment data. To provide a consistent data model for your school, all grade changes should be managed from Schoology.
- The Schoology-Aeries integration only supports the passback of traditional grades by mapping grading categories between the two systems. The Schoology Aeries integration does not currently support the creation of new categories in Aeries through Schoology. Upon initial use of the Aeries SIS Teacher app users will need to configure categories so they map correctly. Users will be presented with all their available categories in Aeries and Schoology to choose from.

Grade information is passed back from Schoology to Aeries when a teacher chooses to sync the two gradebooks and cannot be scheduled. This is done using the Aeries SIS Teacher App.

Limitations

OneRoster does not support the integration of attendance data. This means that attendance taken in Schoology will not be transferred to Aeries. Schoology will work closely with your district to explain best approaches for handling this issue.

Integration Instructions

Before you install the Aeries SIS app into your school or organization's Schoology account, make sure you have the following items completed:

General Requirements

Contact your Aeries rep to obtain your API information.
Check to make sure that no usernames contain spaces in your Aeries instance. Users with usernames that contain spaces will not sync from Aeries into Schoology.

Install the App

Once you have completed the general requirements above, request to install the Aeries SIS app to your Schoology System Admin account. To do this, contact your Schoology representative.

Aeries SIS App Configuration

Once you've completed the steps in General Requirements, you can start setting up your Aeries SIS app in your Schoology System Admin account. Start with the Configuration tab along the top, and work from left to right.

You will need to set up the Configuration, Schools, and Terms tabs before you can start syncing Users, Courses, and Sections from Aeries to Schoology.

Enter the API information you have obtained from your Aeries representative in the Aeries Domain, Consumer Key, and Consumer Secret fields.
Click Save API Credentials.
Use the Scheduling Options field in the Aeries Provisioning Sync Options area to choose whether the sync between Aeries and Schoology is manual or scheduled, and set the frequency of the sync.
- Manual - The Acting User must manually sync the Aeries SIS app in Schoology.
- Scheduled - This setting provisions user, courses, sections, and enrollments from Aeries into Schoology. You may also navigate to the respective tabs in the app and manually sync users, courses, or sections and enrollments at any time. Select Daily unless otherwise instructed by your Schoology representative.
- The date and time you enter for a Scheduled sync is the time your data will be added to the queue, not the time the sync will be completed. For example, if you select 12am - 3am, that job will get queued at 12am, and then will execute once the jobs get to the top of the queue.
Click Save Sync Options to save your settings. You can also change the settings at any time by re-saving the sync options.

Changing the time of your scheduled sync or initiating a manual sync resets the window of time until the next sync. For example, pushing a manual sync of Users at 2pm on Monday causes the scheduled sync to wait 24 hours after the manual sync plus the time to the configured scheduled sync (e.g. 12a-3a). Therefore, the next scheduled sync of all data would occur on Wednesday after 12am. This one day grace period prevents any issues with overlapping syncs of the same provisioning data.

Aeries Active Year

The Active Year selected in this area determines which data is synced between Aeries and Schoology. For example, you can select 2017-2018 to provision users, courses, and enrollments based on the 2017-2018 year into Schoology and pass grades back to courses in that year in Aeries.

When it is time to roll over to the 2018-2019 year, make the change in the Active Year area. Then, users, courses, and enrollments for the 2018-2019 school year will be provisioned into Schoology with the next sync, and grades for the 2018-2019 school year can be passed back to the Aeries Gradebook.

The Active Year can be changed at any time, in case you need to come back and sync data from a previous school year.

Schoology Acting User

To make any changes to the Aeries SIS app, you must be the Acting User for the app and a Schoology System Administrator for your organization.

The Acting User sees the following message displayed in the Schoology Acting User area.

Schools

Map your schools in Aeries to your schools in Schoology on the Schools tab. You can also automatically create new Schoology schools based on your Aeries schools.

In the Map Schools area, Aeries schools are in the left column and Schoology schools are in the right.

If you already have buildings in Schoology, you can create a one-to-one mapping between the Aeries building and the Schoology building.
If you do not want additional buildings in Schoology, you can map your Aeries buildings into a single Schoology building.
If you don't have any school buildings in Schoology and want to automatically create them from your Aeries buildings, select Create New Building in the drop-down list in the Schoology column.
You do not have to map all Aeries buildings to Schoology. Un-mapped buildings and their users, courses, and enrollments will not be provisioned in Schoology.
Click Save Changes to create or update the school mappings.

Terms

After you've completed setting up the Configuration and Schools tabs, you're ready to map your Aeries Terms to your Schoology Grading Periods.

Once you create your schools, they are listed in the Terms tab of the Aeries SIS app.

If you already have grading periods in Schoology, you can create a one-to-one mapping between the Aeries terms to the Schoology grading periods. Make sure you're mapping to the correct school year, which is listed under Map Terms.

This mapping will look different based on your district's system for organizing terms. Work with your Schoology representative to find the right configuration for your terms.

If you don't have any grading periods in Schoology and want to automatically create them from your Aeries terms, select Create new grading period in the drop-down menu in the Schoology column, then click Save Changes. This creates grading periods in Schoology with the name of the term, start date, and end date of the term as listed in Aeries.

If a term is not mapped to Schoology, course sections associated with the term in Aeries will not be provisioned in Schoology.

Once you've mapped the terms for each of the school buildings, click Save Changes. You can view the grading periods in Schoology from your System Settings > Grade Settings.

After setting up your Configuration, Schools, and Terms tabs, contact your Schoology representative before proceeding with the rest of the Aeries integration. Your Schoology team will provide additional guidance and instructions to ensure a seamless integration.

You can work with your Schoology representative to use the Data Prep tool to ensure a successful integration.

Aeries SIS App Sync

After you have completed the Configuration steps above, and once you have worked with your Schoology representative to review the SIS data you have prepared, you can start the sync process using the steps below. This will begin the process of provisioning your Schoology organization with Users, Courses, and Enrollments from Aeries.

Users

To sync users from Aeries to Schoology, you must select the role to which the account will be mapped.

Click the checkbox to the left of the school name.
Map the available roles in Aeries to the roles in your Schoology account.

Syncing the Parent role provisions parent accounts into Schoology as well as the parent-child associations designated in Aeries.
Once you've mapped the roles for each of the school buildings, click Sync Users to begin your first users sync with Aeries.
If you do not want to provision certain roles into Schoology, you can select Do Not Sync.

Once users are created in Schoology by the sync, any updates to their account information must be made in Aeries. However, user accounts cannot be deleted in Schoology by deleting the account in Aeries. If a user leaves your organization, you will need to remove their account in both systems.
Passwords are not included in the sync. Schoology auto-generates passwords for all users created from the sync. You can view and export passwords in Manage Users. These passwords can be used for login for any organization not using Single Sign-On. If required, school-issued passwords can be imported via a manual User Import.
Users can map the Aeries username field as a Schoology email address in the event that the Aeries username is also an email address.

Courses

To provision Schoology with the courses in your Aeries instance:

Select the school(s) for which you'd like courses provisioned by checking the box to the left of the building name.
Click Sync Courses to bring the Aeries courses into Schoology.

Once courses are created in Schoology by the sync, any updates to course information must be made in Aeries. However, courses cannot be deleted in Schoology by deleting the course in Aeries; you will need to delete the course in both systems.

Sections

To provision Schoology with the sections and enrollments in your Aeries instance, select the school(s) for which you'd like sections provisioned. Then click Sync Sections/Enrollments to bring in Aeries sections and enrollments into Schoology.

Student enrollments (users enrolled as members of the course in Schoology) will be updated based on the Aeries sync begin and end enrollment dates. Course Admins who are enrolled directly in Schoology will not be removed by the sync, even if they are not enrolled as course admins in Aeries.

Logs

Use the Logs area of the app to view the progress of your latest sync with Aeries. The logs also allow you to detect any errors occurring during the sync.

Use the drop-down menus to filter to a specific school and/or sync type. For example, if you are looking into an issue with a specific user's account, filter to that school and Users. Click the arrow to the left of the error message to expand for more details.

If you have any questions or encounter any issues with the Aeries sync, please contact your Schoology representative or submit a ticket with the Schoology Help Desk.