Teachers of multiple schools
Within our MAT we have a number of schools each with their own MIS/SIS. For teachers that teach across more than one school, they'll therefore have more than one MIS/SIS staff record and hence more than one MIS/SIS ID. To prevent that staff member from having more than one AD User object (we have a single domain in a single forest for all schools) I set the SamAccountName within the MIS/SIS record for that staff member, and our custom PowerShell provisioning script tests for the presence of that username and if it exists knows not to create another AD user. This local AD domain for all schools is then synced to our Office 365 Education tenant via Azure AD Connect. Knowing that School Data Sync requires the ID field of the student.csv and teacher.csv files to be unique, when I export the data from each school I add a suffix (via PowerShell) to the ID to ensure uniqueness. For example, let's say I have a staff member who teaches in two schools, on one MIS their ID is 24, on another MIS their ID is 35, my teacher.csv might look like this: ID,School DfE Number,Username School1_24,1001,FJones School2_35,1002,Fjones Is this a supported configuration? That is, can an Azure AD User object be matched against multiple SDS sources or must it be a one to one mapping, i.e. Can the Azure AD user target with the Mail Alias of FJones be matched to both School1_24 and School2_35 teacher SDS identities? If an Azure AD User object can only be matched against a single SDS teacher ID, can I have multiple rows per staff definition, for example, if I post-process the school MIS outputs and consolidate the MIS/SIS IDs, is this a valid teacher.csv; ID,School DfE Number,Username MAT_FJones,1001,FJones MAT_FJones,1002,Fjones I've tried a number of combinations but keep coming up with sync errors, and before I get deeper into how SDS is architected (Administrative Units appears to be part of the answer), I thought it might save myself some time if I checked on what is or isn't actually supported. Many thanks SimonAnnouncement: School Data Sync Preview!
New on Office Blogs today: Back to school with Microsoft Classroom and School Data Sync. It’s back-to-school time in the U.S. and many other countries, and we’re excited to invite you to the Microsoft Classroom Preview and the School Data Sync (SDS) Preview. IT admins can visit the preview instructions right now or (for a limited time) sign up to receive free one-on-one help directly from Microsoft. School Data Sync (SDS) helps schools automatically create online classes used by Microsoft Classroom. It also helps Student Information System (SIS) and app partners to integrate with each other so they can build richer learning experiences for the classroom. SDS supports importing CSV files—so it supports virtually every SIS in the market. School IT admins: Get the preview for Microsoft Classroom and SDS. Deploy SDS yourself using these instructions, or For a limited time, sign up to request free one-on-one help directly from Microsoft. Give us feedback on our support site. View partners on the School Data Sync website.
Announcing School Data Sync General Availability!
Hello Everyone, and welcome to the new Microsoft Tech Community focused on Microsoft School Data Sync. We are excited to announce that School Data Sync (SDS), our online classroom automation solution, is moving from preview to general availability! SDS helps schools save time and money by automatically creating online classrooms in Office 365 from their Student Information System (SIS or MIS). For more information, or to sign up for free deployment support for a limited time, please http://aka.ms/sdsga This tech community is a place for peers to share ideas, ask questions, offer suggestions, and provide community support. Microsoft folks will check in to make sure things are running smoothly. Now that hundreds of customers in over 20 countries have already used SDS to sync over 100,000 teachers and 2 million students, I hope this will become a popular gathering spot for school IT admins who use School Data Sync. Thank you, Matt McGinnis Microsoft School Data Sync Product Manager
HiddenGroupMembershipEnabled - SDS setting?
I have a customer who syncs groups to 365 via a CSV import to SDS. Student groups have the HiddenGroupMembershipEnabled attribute set as true. I'm aware that this attribute cannot be edited and to disable this feature, the group would need to be re-created. Is anyone aware of any setting or configuration in SDS that is automatically setting this attribute on student groups? If there is such a setting, can this be changed? Many thanks for your help. Anthony
