Question

PowerSchool Integration - User Locations

  • 22 March 2022
  • 8 replies
  • 188 views

Userlevel 1
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In PowerSchool a user can be associated with multiple buildings as a teacher or as a staff member. We’re trying to figure out how a single location value is selected and sent to IIQ for a given user, particularly a user may be assigned to multiple buildings. What table(s) and field(s) from PowerSchool are used to set the location? Is it possible to select a different table/field or have different options for a staff user than a teacher user?

We have received feedback from users that the building they are under in IIQ is outdated or incorrect. We would like to understand how the incorrect info is getting transferred as opposed to setting corrective overrides.

Just this week I noticed that my own account switched buildings and I have no idea why. As a district IT administrator my own PowerSchool user table account has a homeschoolid of the district ofiice. I also have teachers table records associated with each of the other buildings in the district, some as staff and some as teacher. Additionally, I might also appear in the schoolstaff table if I am scheduled as a teacher.


8 replies

Userlevel 7
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Hey @jwalstra 

Currently there you can only have one source of location data. I am working with the dev team to provide me with the table/field from PowerSchool that is used to set the location. I will update you on that piece of information soon. 

 

 

Userlevel 7
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@jwalstra 
According to the PowerSchool documentation, this is coming from student/school_enrollment/school_id for students

And for staff:  staff/school_affiliations/school_affiliation/school_id 

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Looks like those might be the mapped destinations in IIQ as opposed to the originating fields in PowerSchool. Students are getting picked up in their ‘primary’ building regardless of other schools in which they might have classes. For teachers and staff, the value that IIQ picks up is apparently the person’s last added teacher location. That’s OK in a lot of situations because the teacher is full time at that place. For other types of staff though, like special ed or ELL support, the person might serve kids in multiple buildings. The better option for IIQ to pull would be the ‘homeschoolid’ from either the PowerSchool teachers or users tables. It is the default building set for users whether they have one or several building assignments. That home building is usually the one where the user has an office or spends the most time and is where the IT and/or facilities department would most likely interact with them.

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I was wondering the same thing regarding this question. Is there any updates on this? We have a teacher who has the wrong building listed and we are unsure why. 

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We pressed the issue last week and it appears there is an updated API in development. We are hoping to be able to test it ASAP. We have dozens and dozens of oddball listings so we are verrry motivated to work out a solution.

Userlevel 7
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@dbindschusz - we are actively working on an updated plugin for our PowerSchool integration. @jwalstra has been very helpful and working with our product team on this topic.  

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We are having an issue with staff that use their work email (our domain) as their contact email in PowerSchool on their students. This is prioritizing OVER the staff information and moving the employee to the student locations. If we break the sync and connect to the staff user it is just overwritten by the API. The only option I see to prevent this is to manually sync the staff to their employee information and then lock them. Unfortunatley I do not see a better work around. 

Userlevel 7
Badge +12

@MKittrell 2434d00 wcsdms I looked into this for you as well, but I could not find another or cleaner workaround either. 

I hope another one of our districts will be able to provide some insight into their workflows as well! 😄

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