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School Data Sync (Plan 1) service plan what is it?

Brass Contributor

This morning a new tile mysterie tile.PNGshowed up in the portal of all our users. I checked the enabled serviceplans for my users and I noticed "School Data Sync (Plan 1)" was enabled for my Office 365 education plus license. I disabled the serviceplan for all my users, because I don't know what is does. I like to test new feature before making it available for all our users. I have read about school data sync before, it's about syncing data from a SIS tot O365. But what is the tile going to do? I haven't seen any communication about releasing this specific service plan and also the MS service desk couldn't give more info then the one available online from january when SDS became GA. 

Does anyone kwno what the tile is going to do as soon it's finished setting up?

9 Replies

We got the same thing in our tenant this morning.  I've opened a case with Microsoft (in the hopes that it is a mistake that they will fix), and will post back if I hear any useful information.  For what it is worth, the Office 365 Roadmap added these features to their "In Development" section within the last week - which is what leads me to believe these were deployed accidentally.

The tile icon is for Microsoft Classroom which I understood was being discontinued after the Preview ended?

 

We never used Classroom or SDS so I was suprised to see it in my app launcher this morning.

And to add to that a bit... I found an article that said you could disable SDS and Classroom globally at sds.microsoft.com but our global admins cannot login there because they don't have a Classroom license. Catch-22.
best response confirmed by Kirk Francis (Brass Contributor)
Solution

Following up from my earlier post, Microsoft support says they did this on purpose - it's here to stay.  School Data Sync (Plan 1) is included in the Office 365 Education licensing SKUs as of today.  (Thanks for the heads up, Microsoft!!)

 

There is little documentation from an admin perspective on this, and I personally have lots of questions.  But, I'll include some reference links that I've read so far:

 

https://blogs.office.com/2016/08/18/back-to-school-with-microsoft-classroom-and-school-data-sync/

https://blogs.office.com/2017/01/23/announcing-school-data-sync-general-availability/

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Get-started-with-Microsoft-Classroom-dd5d064f-6c22-41e0-b72...

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Overview-of-School-Data-Sync-f3d1147b-4ade-4905-8518-508e72...

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4022583/microsoft-classroom-preview-features-are-moving-to-...

 

Further questions I now have:

  • Is the Classroom feature they just deployed the OLD, soon-to-be-deprecated verson of Classroom or the new Teams integrated Classroom?
  • If this is the new Teams integrated Classroom, why the heck is it not dependant on the tenant level Teams setting which disables Teams?

Good and fair questions!

 

Now we are seeing the icon changing from the old Classroom leaf to some sort of person at a chalkboard icon so that's even more weird.

And now I have a working Classroom tile in my app launcher. I understand the pushing the SDS license was intentional but having this application enable can't be intended.

Thanx for the info, you got a better response on your ticket, than the ticket I opened with MS. The reply I got was wait until the tile is finished setting up and you'll see what is does...

In my app launcher the tile is still setting up. I disabled it for the rest of my users and I'll wait till there is more info available. Using classroom of teams university wide isn't planned yet anyway.

We found that if you removed the SDS license and put it back the user ends up with a working Classroom tile. We removed all the licenses by Powershell and that got rid of the tiles. We have no plans to use Classroom or SDS as we are standardized on Instructure Canvas for LMS.

We got a call back on the ticket confirming the tile appearing was a bug and they are working to resolve that

Wow, how nice - it's like they got you a lovely surprise gift!  ;)

1 best response

Accepted Solutions
best response confirmed by Kirk Francis (Brass Contributor)
Solution

Following up from my earlier post, Microsoft support says they did this on purpose - it's here to stay.  School Data Sync (Plan 1) is included in the Office 365 Education licensing SKUs as of today.  (Thanks for the heads up, Microsoft!!)

 

There is little documentation from an admin perspective on this, and I personally have lots of questions.  But, I'll include some reference links that I've read so far:

 

https://blogs.office.com/2016/08/18/back-to-school-with-microsoft-classroom-and-school-data-sync/

https://blogs.office.com/2017/01/23/announcing-school-data-sync-general-availability/

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Get-started-with-Microsoft-Classroom-dd5d064f-6c22-41e0-b72...

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Overview-of-School-Data-Sync-f3d1147b-4ade-4905-8518-508e72...

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4022583/microsoft-classroom-preview-features-are-moving-to-...

 

Further questions I now have:

  • Is the Classroom feature they just deployed the OLD, soon-to-be-deprecated verson of Classroom or the new Teams integrated Classroom?
  • If this is the new Teams integrated Classroom, why the heck is it not dependant on the tenant level Teams setting which disables Teams?

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