Transition from School Data Sync (Classic)

  • Article

Important

We're excited to announce that the new School Data Sync (SDS) experience is in Public Preview. The new SDS experience is an opt-in during our Public Preview.

Warning

If your environment has more than 50k users and you also require to create and manage classes and enrollments, we do not recommend transitioning during Public Preview.

Warning

If your environment needs to directly connect data from multiple SISs into a single subscription, we do not recommend transitioning during Public Preview. If this configuration is needed then pre-processing, outside of SDS, will need to occur to combine the data before submitting the data through one of the supported CSV formats. Username values in the CSV will need to include the fully qualified domain value, e.g. username@domain, for user targeted-domain identity mapping.

Overview

The architecture of School Data Sync (SDS) is different from the SDS (Classic) version.

SDS models the best practices of the Education Customer Success Team that has helped institutions successfully set up and use SDS to empower Microsoft 365 experiences globally.

The on-boarding experience is broken down into the following steps:

  1. Ingest and transform
    • Define your connection to your institution’s data stored in your SIS/SMS by defining your source system, the format of the incoming data, your user identity rules, and your active academic year.
  2. Validate, store and data health
    • Determine the health of the data, SDS passes the data through data matching and validation rules to help safeguard good required and optional data only going into the data lake. Data that doesn't pass validation is identified as errors or warnings and isn't sent to the data lake.
  3. Enable scenarios to improve learning outcomes
    • Dynamic provisioning and roster updates for virtual classrooms in Microsoft 365, for simplified deployment and adoption of Microsoft 365 Group-enabled apps like Teams, SharePoint, Exchange, and OneNote Class Notebooks.
      • Ability to store objects and attributes SDS syncs within Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD).
    • Provisioning of users and groups for IT, for simplified Microsoft 365 identity management, app management, and device management with Security Groups and Administrative Units.
    • Provisioning to Azure AD also makes the information available to third party applications through the Education APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) and Microsoft Graph.
    • (Optional) Sync external SIS / SMS data with Insights for Education Leaders and link with Microsoft 365 activity and Azure AD data, for providing advanced analytics within the Insights application found in Teams. You can also create your own analytics with Education Data Lake Export to Azure in your subscription.

Graphic that shows SDS high-level overview.

Take time to read over School Data Sync Overview to learn more about changes in the SDS platform and architecture.

Review and monitor What's new and Coming soon for information on current and upcoming features supported by SDS to help with planning your transition.

Prepping for transition

  1. Review responses for the highlighted Frequently Asked Questions.
  2. Complete review of Planning Checklist.
  3. Begin prepping SIS / SMS data.
    • If CSV format, determine SDS v2.1 CSV or SDS v1 CSV.
      • Customers using other SDS (Classic) formats need to move to supported formats
        • SDS UK CSV -> SDS v1 CSV or SDS v2.1 CSV
        • SDS v2 CSV -> SDS v2.1 CSV
        • Clever CSV -> SDS v1 CSV or SDS v2.1 CSV
        • Apple School Manager (ASM) -> SDS v2.1 CSV
          • For Apple School Manager, only need to provide orgs.csv, with a single organization record, users.csv, and roles.csv required fields and corresponding data
    • If OneRoster API format
      • Confirm that the OneRoster SIS configuration has enabled the 'Is Active' option for the connection used by School Data Sync
      • This ensures that only active data for the active School Year and session is provided as the school year progresses
      • If you need to sync Parent & Guardians, ensure that you provider has completed validation for the feature to be enabled
        • SDS doesn't support side loading the data with CSV as a separate ingestion from the data coming through the OneRoster API
  4. (Required) Perform SDS (Classic) Security Groups and Administrative Units membership cleanup.
  5. Validate if you're a previous SDS for Insights / Insights Premium customer.
  6. (Optional) Perform SDS (Classic) Class / Section group cleanup to target classes / sections that need archiving.
  7. Based on the group splits selected, SDS may not bind to (Classic) Security Groups and associate memberships. You may need to review and apply any configuration settings based on your previous (Classic) Security Groups to the new ones created by SDS. The check and updates will need to happen after the first run has completed for the Security Groups flow as part of your transition steps.
  8. Based on the group splits selected, SDS may not bind to (Classic) Administrative Units and associate memberships. You may need to review and apply any configuration settings based on your previous (Classic) Administrative Units to the new ones created by SDS. The check and updates will need to happen after the first run has completed for the Administrative Units flow as part of your transition steps.

Starting transition

From School Data Sync (Classic) home page, select the option presented to Go to School Data Sync to open a new browser or tab. Select accordingly to continue to the next steps.

Previous SDS for Insights / Insights Premium Customer

  • If you're a previous SDS for Insights / Insights Premium customer:
    • Your experience starts with the steps for Academic Year Transition
      • If your existing data source was SDS (Classic) sync profiles, you need to follow the options to "Create a new source" and follow the steps based on your source format.
      • Once you have completed creating your new inbound flow and first run, review the results of your Inbound flow run in SDS to determine data health.
        • Health and Monitoring
        • If needed, fix any errors and warnings identified in the source system and wait for the next run to complete.
      • Create Microsoft 365 Users Flow
      • Create Microsoft 365 Group and Teams Flow
      • (Optional) Create Microsoft Security Groups Flow
        • Provision Security Groups
        • Based on the group splits selected, SDS may not bind to (Classic) Security Groups and associate memberships. You may need to review and apply any configuration settings based on your previous (Classic) Security Groups to the new ones created by SDS. The check and updates will need to happen after the first run has completed for the Security Groups flow as part of your transition steps.
      • (Optional) Create Administrative Units Flow
        • Provision Administrative Units
        • Based on the group splits selected, SDS may not bind to (Classic) Administrative Units and associate memberships. You may need to review and apply any configuration settings based on your previous (Classic) Administrative Units to the new ones created by SDS. The check and updates will need to happen after the first run has completed for the Administrative Units flow as part of your transition steps.

Not a previous SDS for Insights / Insights Premium Customer

  • If you're not a previous SDS for Insights / Insights Premium Customer:
    • Your experience starts with a request to "Turn on School Data Sync".
      • Allow 2 - 5 minutes for services to provision to subscription before next step.
        • The browser refreshes to let you know that School Data Sync has completed provisioning services.
      • Begin by connecting your institution’s data.
    • Select Connect your data. Depending on your source data format, proceed to the following accordingly. You need to follow the options to "Create a new source".
    • Once you have completed creating your new inbound flow and first run, review the results of your Inbound flow run in SDS to determine data health.
      • Health and Monitoring
      • If needed, fix any errors and warnings identified in the source system and wait for the next run to complete.
    • Create Microsoft 365 Users Flow
    • Create Microsoft 365 Group and Teams Flow
    • (Optional) Create Microsoft Security Groups Flow
      • Provision Security Groups
      • Based on the group splits selected, SDS may not bind to (Classic) Security Groups and associate memberships. You may need to review and apply any configuration settings based on your previous (Classic) Security Groups to the new ones created by SDS. The check and updates will need to happen after the first run has completed for the Security Groups flow as part of your transition steps.
    • (Optional) Create Administrative Units Flow
      • Provision Administrative Units
      • Based on the group splits selected, SDS may not bind to (Classic) Administrative Units and associate memberships. You may need to review and apply any configuration settings based on your previous (Classic) Administrative Units to the new ones created by SDS. The check and updates will need to happen after the first run has completed for the Administrative Units flow as part of your transition steps.

Highlighted frequently asked questions

Review responses in Frequently Asked Questions. We've highlighted a few below.