Forum Discussion
SDS setting up for Teams
Hi there,
1) School Data Sync is designed to have multiple schools within one set of files, you could also have multiple profiles, ie. one for each school, but that is not recommended.
2) While configuring the SDS profile you can choose to either create new users or match existing users, choose the latter option to avoid getting duplicates.
Please also have a look at the documentation with examples https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/schooldatasync/csv-files-for-school-data-sync, and my blog post on this subject at https://teams.rocks/2018/04/04/automate-teams-for-education-with-school-data-sync/.
If you need help with School Data Sync deployment I highly recommend Microsofts free offering available at https://aka.ms/sdssignup.
Best of luck!
\Magnus
Hi there,
1) School Data Sync is designed to have multiple schools within one set of files, you could also have multiple profiles, ie. one for each school, but that is not recommended.
2) While configuring the SDS profile you can choose to either create new users or match existing users, choose the latter option to avoid getting duplicates.
Please also have a look at the documentation with examples https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/schooldatasync/csv-files-for-school-data-sync, and my blog post on this subject at https://teams.rocks/2018/04/04/automate-teams-for-education-with-school-data-sync/.
If you need help with School Data Sync deployment I highly recommend Microsofts free offering available at https://aka.ms/sdssignup.
Best of luck!
\Magnus
Thanks Magnus for the answer.
However, if we go with the SDS does that mean we can handle expiration policies, naming policies, do the users will have the ability to create teams.
If it is the same set of files, i guess because of the sync once set up, it will pick any changes and action accordingly.
However, is there an attribute or property for new and existing records as some of the new schools onboarded will have new users while the schools we have already on-boarded for existing SharePoint sites already have account in AD.
Hi there,
If you go with SDS the display name of the team will be whatever you specify in the CSVs, most often the same name used in your Student Information System. The alias as well as any SharePoint URLs etc. will be Section_ followed by a GUID, like Section_1234567.
End of year when it's time to retire teams you can ie. choose to archive all teams created by that SDS profile, and setup a new profile for the next school year. When you archive the team it's still available, but students cannot make any changes since it's read-only. After a few years when students no longer need access you can choose to delete all those teams.
By default everyone has access to create teams, but in an education environment this can get messy so you should restrict access to creating Groups, which will also restrict access to create teams. You can read more about that https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/admin/create-groups/manage-creation-of-groups?redirectSourcePath=%252fen-ie%252farticle%252fmanage-who-can-create-office-365-groups-4c46c8cb-17d0-44b5-9776-005fced8e618&view=o365-worldwide.
Any changes will apply automatically if you update the CSVs while a sync is in place.
If users are in AD and then synced using something like Azure AD Connect you choose to match users ie. by UPN, mail attribute or username + a domain. Again, this should all be available in the documentation. If you have some schools where students are not in AD but you want users to be provisioned in Azure AD based on data from your SIS you need a separate profile for that.
As I said, Microsoft will help you with all this for free! Good luck! :)
