Integrate Apple School Manager with your Student Information System (SIS)
Use Apple School Manager to securely integrate with your Student Information System (SIS). After you’ve authenticated and connected your SIS, specific information — such as management, staff, instructor and student names and classes — is copied into Apple School Manager. You can then assign roles to your staff, instructors and students and set their initial passwords. Apple School Manager periodically imports changes from your SIS. Data is never written back to your SIS from Apple School Manager.
When you connect your district’s SIS to Apple School Manager, it provides a unique ID for everyone in your organisation (including school management, staff, instructors and students). Apple School Manager also tracks changes to classes and instructors throughout the year. So, for example, if a student joins two weeks into the year, a Managed Apple ID tied to the student’s instructor is ready and waiting.
If you’re connecting to a Student Information System (SIS) or importing users with Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP), and using federated authentication, users must have an email address. See Managed Apple ID features for students and instructors.
If you’re importing Student Information System (SIS) using Claris Connect for Apple School Manager, you will receive an email from Claris Connect to begin setup. See the Claris Connect for Apple School Manager User Guide to complete the setup process.
Before you connect to your SIS, you may want to decide how to create your Managed Apple IDs. See Intro to federated authentication.
After you link Apple School Manager to your SIS, you’ll see the name of the SIS and what was imported — for example, the number and type of users, the number of classes, and locations. You can also adjust the view individual window to display additional users.
SIS updates
Apple School Manager receives updates every 24 hours from your SIS, so when a new student is added to the SIS, Apple School Manager automatically creates an account and a Managed Apple ID for that student. You can then share the new student’s account credentials with the new student through email or a print-out.
Note: SIS data from Powerschool and Infinite Campus (serving OneRoster API version 1.1) can be imported up to 30 days before the start of academic term.
Connect to a Student Information System (SIS)
In Apple School Manager , sign in as a user that has the role of Administrator, Site Manager or People Manager.
Tap your name at the bottom of the sidebar, tap Preferences , tap Directory Sync , then tap Connect next to SIS/SFTP.
Tap next to Find Students, Instructors and Classes, then select Connect to SIS.
Choose your SIS type from the pop-up menu and then tap Continue.
Because each SIS handles its data and security differently, follow the detailed instructions shown in the window for the SIS you selected.
Enter any required information, tap Connect and then wait for the copy process to complete.
Depending on the connection speed and the amount of data being copied, this process could take some time.
Review any errors that occur. You’ll need to correct these in your SIS system.
To review errors in detail, see Read log files.
Tap “Review [name of SIS] data” to view the data being added.
Make sure the data looks correct and then tap Confirm.
Important: Don’t edit information on an account after connecting Apple School Manager to your SIS. If you do, the account will be considered a local account and will no longer be associated with your SIS.
View and edit SIS information
In Apple School Manager , sign in as a user that has the role of Administrator, Site Manager or People Manager.
Tap your name at the bottom of the sidebar, tap Preferences , tap Directory Sync , then select the data source that contains the SIS information you want to review for the selected location.
Tap Edit to edit the URL, key and secret for the SIS you’re connected to.
Select “Import data 30 days ahead of term” to import SIS data ahead of the academic term, or leave unselected to sync when the term begins, then tap Save.