Schoology SIS Connect App: Implementation and Configuration Guide

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

What is required to implement the Schoology SIS Connect app in Schoology?

1. Contact your SIS rep to obtain your API information.
2. Contact your Schoology representative to enable the app and assist with the implementation of the integration.

What information is transferred from my SIS to Schoology?

Schoology will pull the following information from your SIS:

• School building information
• Users
• Grading periods/terms

• Courses, Sections, and Enrollments
  
  

  

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

How often is roster information updated between the systems?

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

The following options are available:

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

What information is transferred from Schoology to my SIS?

Schoology will push the following information to your SIS:

• Grade items (Assignments & Assessments)

• Grade updates (Changes to grades)
  
  

  

  • Graded items created and updated in your SIS will not be transferred to Schoology to establish a master data source for all information. Schoology is the master for changes to grade data, while your SIS 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 SIS Connect integration only supports the passback of traditional grades by mapping grading categories between the two systems. The Schoology SIS integration does not currently support the creation of new categories in your SIS through Schoology. Upon initial use of SIS Connect grade passback app, users will need to configure categories so they map correctly. Users will be presented with all their available categories in your SIS and Schoology to choose from. Learn more about this in the Schoology SIS Connect teacher app article.

  
  

How often is grade information updated between the systems?

Grade information is passed back from Schoology to your SIS when a teacher chooses to sync the two gradebooks and cannot be scheduled. This is done using the Schoology SIS Connect teacher app at the course level.

What are the limitations of the Schoology SIS Connect integration?

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

Schoology SIS Connect Integration Instructions

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

General Requirements

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

Install the App

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

Schoology SIS Connect App Configuration

Once you've completed the steps in General Requirements, and your Schoology representative has enabled the app for your organization, you can start setting up your Schoology SIS Connect app in your Schoology System Admin account.

First, click the App Center icon (four squares) and select Schoology SIS Connect.

Start by selecting your SIS. Click Select SIS, then use the menu to select from the list of available SIS partners.

Please note that once you save your SIS selection you will not be able to change it. If you are sure, click Yes, confirm.

Once your SIS has been selected, 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 your SIS to Schoology.

Configuration

After you've selected your SIS, the SIS Connect app will display a field with your configured SIS.

1. Enter the API information you have obtained from your SIS representative in the SIS Connect Domain, Consumer Key, and Consumer Secret fields.
2. Click Save API Credentials.
3. Use the Scheduling Options field in the SIS Connect Provisioning Sync Options area to choose whether the sync between your SIS and Schoology is manual or scheduled, and set the frequency of the sync.
   1. Manual - The Acting User must manually sync the SIS Connect app in Schoology.
   2. Scheduled - This setting provisions user, courses, sections, and enrollments from your SIS 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.
4. Click Save Sync Options to save your settings. You can also change the settings at any time by re-saving the sync options.

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 12 am - 3 am, that job will get queued at 12am, and then will execute once the jobs get to the top of the queue.

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 2 pm 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.

SIS Connect Active Year

The Active Year selected in this area determines which data is synced between your SIS 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 your SIS.

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

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

1. If you already have buildings in Schoology, you can create a one-to-one mapping between the SIS building and the Schoology building.
2. If you do not want additional buildings in Schoology, you can map your SIS buildings into a single Schoology building.
3. If you don't have any school buildings in Schoology and want to automatically create them from your SIS buildings, select Create New Building in the drop-down list in the Schoology column.
4. You do not have to map all your SIS buildings to Schoology. Un-mapped buildings and their users, courses, and enrollments will not be provisioned in Schoology.
5. 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 SIS Terms to your Schoology Grading Periods.

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

If you already have grading periods in Schoology, you can map the SIS 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 SIS 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 your SIS.

If a term is not mapped to Schoology, course sections associated with the term in your SIS 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 Grade Settings.

After setting up your Configuration, Schools, and Terms tabs, contact your Schoology representative before proceeding with the rest of the Schoology SIS Connect integration. You can work with your Schoology representative to use the Data Prep tool. Your Schoology team will provide additional guidance and instructions to ensure seamless integration.

Schoology SIS Connect 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 your SIS.

Users

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

1. Check the box to the left of the school name.
2. Map the available roles in your SIS to the roles in your Schoology account. If you do not want to provision certain roles into Schoology, you can select Do Not Sync.
3. Once you've mapped the roles for each of the school buildings, click Sync Users to begin your first users' sync with your SIS.

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 your SIS. However, user accounts cannot be deleted in Schoology by deleting the account in your SIS. 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.

Courses

To provision Schoology with the courses in your SIS instance:

1. Select the school(s) for which you'd like courses provisioned by checking the box to the left of the building name.

2. Click Sync Courses to bring your SIS courses into Schoology.
   
   

   

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

Sections

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

Student enrollments (users enrolled as members of the course in Schoology) will be updated based on the SIS sync. 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 your SIS.

Logs

Use the Logs area of the app to view the progress of your latest sync with your SIS. 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 your SIS sync, please contact your Schoology representative or submit a ticket with the Schoology Help Desk.