This convention covers our own file formats, but please note that we accept file formats that are automatically generated from other systems that do not follow these conventions. If modifying data to fit our structure is difficult, we can provide additional services to transform your data based on the support package that your district has purchased

General conventions

• File format:

  • Please send ALL files as CSVs (Comma Separated Values) as well as the file extension as .csv. We recommend that files are sent with double-quote text qualifiers - each field being surrounded with double quotes❗

  • All column headers must be match exactly - these are always "snake case" (lower case words separated by underscores)

  • ⚠️ Be aware of saving CSVs in Microsoft Excel (or similar spreadsheet software) as data values can change if Excel detects a column to be a different data type. Here’s a video on loading a file into Excel and changing a long number to a text value:

    https://www.loom.com/share/1aaf065bd58442d88ebeac24cbc375ae

• File naming:

  • Please name files correctly❗ - File names are included in every data type schema and correct file names are needed to tell our system how your file processes the data into the correct data type.
  • Our file names are always "snake case" (lower case words separated by underscores)

• File location:

  • Files dropped in our /automated SFTP directory are processed within 5-10 minutes. Files dropped in our /other directory are intended to be reviewed for testing.

• File drop-off Timing:

  • Files are processed within 5-10 minutes of the time received by the SFTP server, depending on system load and size of file
  • We prefer that files are dropped of on our SFTP server between 11 PM and 2 AM CT

Student Identifiers:

Account Identifiers in SchooLinks

Most of the files we accept are at the student level

• SchooLinks can support consuming of data and matching with your students accounts in SchooLinks based on two different unique identifiers that we call internally sis_id and student_number
• For our CSV file-based and API-based imports of student data, we can support either identifier, but this identifier used for data export must be set globally in our platform for your district. So if you want to use sis_id this must be the identifier that you use for ALL student data imports. This is to avoid confusion and potential mis-matching of ids space and inadvertent student mis-matching

Dataset documentation

In order to make the data syncing process straightforward, we have defined the exact file structure and naming convention for all of the data requirements.

For CSV schemas, we have made sure to include information about the following:

• Filename and path (relative to your SFTP home directory)