Activate Class Teams
School Data Sync (SDS) is improving its Class Teams provisioning process!
When classes are synced, SDS creates a Microsoft 365 group for each class synced. SDS also adds the students as group members, and the teachers as group owners. As student rosters change in the SIS, SDS also updates the rosters in the Groups, to reflect the SIS. This portion of the process will stay the same.
Previously, when the Teacher logged into Teams for the first time, a Class Team would be created on demand. If the Teacher never logged in to Teams, the Class Team wouldn’t be created. Once the Class Team was enabled by the teacher, all students would sync from the Microsoft 365 group to the Class Team, enabling access for students.
Feedback from SDS customers identified two key issues with this process:
If the Teacher logged in to Teams unintentionally, students may have been granted access unintentionally, and allow students to use the team in an unmonitored state.
The sync process between Microsoft Entra ID and Teams could trigger a massive amount of Team syncs at once, causing team provisioning delays in the on-demand team provisioning process.
We’re happy to announce, our new Class Team sync process addresses both issues!
SDS will continue to create the Microsoft 365 group, as it does today. SDS will also force provision the Class Team and add the Teacher, when the class is initially synced. This will give the Teacher immediate access to the Team, to set up and add their Class Notebook, apps, settings, and class content. Students however won't be granted access immediately. Instead, they'll sync as pending users, and can't see or access the Team before the Teacher selects the “Active” button. Once activated, the students will convert from pending users to regular users and may then (and only then) begin using the Class Team.
This change is now live and will be the default behavior for all new SDS sync profiles! Existing profiles will continue to work as they did, when they were created. If you select edit >save on an existing sync profile, it will update all classes to use this new provisioning pipeline, and force Team creation with the Activate option for any class without a Team today. If you’d like help with updating your sync profiles to apply this new process, reach out to our SDS onboarding team for support at https://aka.ms/SDSSupport.
For more information on the Teacher's perspective and what they need to do, see Activate Early Access class teams created with School Data Sync.