PowerSchool Auto Sync

Important Note: If your district uses the North Carolina state-based PowerSchool setup, you cannot use the PowerSchool Auto Sync. However, Clever is integrated with NCEdCloud. 

This article covers the following:

1. PowerSchool Auto Sync Functionality
2. Customization
3. School Year Rollover
4. Troubleshooting Missing Teacher Records
5. Permissions

PowerSchool Auto Sync Functionality
✓ Runs every two hours, by exporting via Direct Database Export (DDE)
✓ Syncs all students with an active enrollment status ("enroll_status" = 0)
✓ Student email addresses are not synced by default, but they can be brought in through the steps listed below under Customization
✓ Syncs all staff members from the Staff table, who are assigned to an active School and have an active staff status ("Status" = 1)
X Cannot sync the Central Office (school_id = 0), or any staff assigned to this site
X Cannot sync co-teachers at this time

Customization
PowerSchool syncs can be customized to sync nightly, instead of every two hours.

Syncs can also be customized to pull additional fields available through DDE. To request additional fields please fill out this form.

Clever can filter exports from PowerSchool to limit the schools, teachers, or students included in the sync. Reach out to Clever Support if you would like to filter exports.

For information on de-duplicating teacher records from PowerSchool, see this article. 

To sync student emails from the default "Student Email" page in PowerSchool, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to page-level permissions in PowerSchool: Start Page > System Administrator > Security > Access to Page Permissions (/admin/security/changepageaccesspriv.html)
2. Navigate to quick exports: Start > System > Page and Data Management > Quick Export (admin/importexport/exportstudents.html)
3. Click on modify access privileges for this page
4. Set permissions for the appropriate security group to 'Full' (the security group should be the group assigned to the PowerSchool user you've shared with Clever). Submit changes
5. Turn off page level permissions. Navigate to: Start Page > System Administrator > Security > Access to Page Permissions (/admin/security/changepageaccesspriv.html)

To request additional customization and filtering for your PowerSchool sync, request assistance from Clever Support.

School Year Rollover
On August 1st, Clever will begin syncing all enrollments with an end date after August 1st, 2016 (“DateLeft” > 8/1/2017). If you would like to begin syncing enrollments for the 2017-18 School Year before August, please request assistance from Clever Support.

Troubleshooting Missing Teacher Records
There may be users such as administrators, secretaries, and para-professionals who might not use PowerSchool directly, but need access to applications through Clever. If those users are missing from your Clever data, please ensure that those users are tied to a specific school site within PowerSchool.  Teaching staff who are associated with the district office, but not a specific school, will not be included in the PowerSchool auto sync.

If you have any additional questions please feel free to open a support request and our team will be glad to help!

Permissions
Clever requires specific permissions in order to facilitate an automatic sync with your SIS. Clever is a read-only service, and requires the following permissions to integrate with PowerSchool. Please see the attached document for best practices.

In addition to these permissions, we recommend the following best practices:

1. Create an individual SIS account only for Clever -- no one else should log in with the same credentials; and
2. Limit Clever's SIS account to read-only access.

Note: Clever also offers an alternative method of sharing PowerSchool rosters with Clever (via SFTP) – please contact us if you’d like to explore this option for your district.