Prepare to 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, instructors, students, and classes are copied into Apple School Manager. You can then assign roles to staff, instructors, and students and set their initial passwords. Apple School Manager periodically updates changes from your SIS. At no time is data written back to your SIS.
When you integrate your district’s SIS to Apple School Manager, it provides a unique ID for everyone in your organization (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 2 weeks into the year, a Managed Apple ID tied to the student’s instructor is ready and waiting.
If you’re (1) integrating with an SIS or importing users with the Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP), and (2) using federated authentication, users must have an email address. See Additional Managed Apple ID features for instructors and students.
Before you integrate with your SIS, review this page carefully. You should also decide how to create your Managed Apple IDs. See Intro to federated authentication. After you review this page, see Integrate with your Student Information System (SIS).
After you integrate your SIS with Apple School Manager, you’ll see the name of the SIS and what was imported in the appropriate place—for example, in Users you’ll see the number and type of users
Directory sync updates
Apple School Manager has added new features to enhance SIS synchronization. These enhancements use Claris Connect and include options to filter by schools and terms, and prevent duplicate entries during data import.
Supported SISs
Apple School Manager currently supports integration with the following SISs:
Aeries
eSchoolData
Follet Aspen
Infinite Campus
Powerschool
PowerSchool SIS
eSchoolPlus SIS
Skyward
SMS
Qmlativ
Veracross
Note: Any SIS not listed above that supports the OneRoster version 1.1 or 1.2 specification can connect directly using the OneRoster option or through the uploading of the Apple formatted or OneRoster .csv files using SFTP. (Claris Connect leverages the OneRoster specification that’s publicly available from IMS Global Learning Consortium.) For more information on uploading files using SFTP, see “Uploading .csv files” later on this page.
SIS migration requirements
Organizations that are currently using one of the below direct SIS connections must migrate by September 30th, 2024:
Powerschool
SunGARD
eSchoolPLUS
Infinite Campus
Download and configure plug-in settings
Make sure that your API Root URL, Client ID, and Client Secret are correct. Consult your SIS documentation if you need help finding these values.
Merge data with Sync Assist
The Sync Assist feature patches common issues while it syncs data between your SIS and Apple School Manager. It also filters data imported during the sync. You can use two methods to accomplish this:
Use Patch Data to prevent data with errors and duplicate records from being imported.
Use Filter Data to choose the schools, user accounts (such as instructors and students), classes, courses, and locations that you want to import data from.
For more information, see Filtering SIS import data and Patching data errors in Apple School Manager CSVs in Claris Connect Help.
Note: Patching and filtering are available only when syncing directly with your SIS.
SIS sync frequency
Apple School Manager syncs data from your SIS based on Sync Frequency settings. These settings are configured when:
Integrating with a new SIS
Reconfiguring an existing SIS integration
By default, the sync is set to run at daily at 1:00 a.m. in your local time zone.
Use roster data from SIS
If you’re using roster data from your SIS in Apple School Manager, errors may appear during the summer break or near the beginning of the school year. This is likely due to the school year rollover in your SIS. To address these errors, change the Filter Data option for instructors, students, classes, courses, and locations to “Active within next 30 days.”
Uploading .csv files
You can use the Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) to upload all the .csv files from your Student Information System (SIS) to Apple School Manager. You may want to do this for the following reasons:
Your Student Information System (SIS) isn’t currently supported by Apple School Manager but may be supported in the future.
You don’t have an SIS but want to import the exact same information from the system you currently use.
Note: SFTP upload requires a third-party app on a Mac. If you don’t have an SFTP client installed, you can find one in the Mac App Store.
Set up and upload requirements for .csv files
Before you set up an SFTP upload, you must first verify a domain. Then, after a domain is verified, Apple School Manager gives you Apple formatted template .csv files and the access information for a private SFTP server. You can open the files in a spreadsheet app (such as Numbers).
Creating an SFTP connection to upload your data requires a user account with a role that has the “Configure organization” privilege. Depending on your SFTP app, future uploads can take place automatically after the zipped file is placed in a folder. To see which roles have that privilege, see Intro to roles and privileges.
Before you upload your templates, you should decide how to create your Managed Apple IDs. See Use Managed Apple IDs.
.csv file requirements
Before you import your data, read the following to understand how to properly configure your .csv files with the appropriate information.
After the .csv files are successfully uploaded
You can then assign roles to your staff, instructors, and students. Any time you upload new files, that information is automatically added to Apple School Manager and updated there. At no time is data written back to your SIS or other systems.
After you’ve made the initial connection, Apple School Manager expects updates to include every .csv file, even if nothing has changed with a particular file. For example, if you have new students to add but no new staff, classes, or rosters, you must still upload those files.
To begin the upload process, see Upload Apple formatted or OneRoster .csv files.