SameGoal integrates with any ODBC-compliant third-party student information system. For less popular or homegrown SIS solutions, SameGoal supports SFTP-based CSV file upload. This method works for just about any SIS, but typically requires more setup work than a streamlined integration process available for your SIS.
Steps
To setup an automated nightly demographics integration:- Generate CSV files in accordance with our generic API.
- Upload CSV files to your SameGoal SFTP account for processing.
- Connect to your SameGoal SFTP account.
- Create a new epoch directory in /upload/ whose name is of the date-time format YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS.
- Upload generated CSV files directly into the epoch directory.
- Upload an empty file named COMPLETE (case sensitive) into the epoch directory to indicate the upload is final and can be processed.
For example, a nightly process running January 1, 2020 would typically write the following:
- /upload/20200101-139029/students.csv
- /upload/20200101-139029/guardians.csv
- /upload/20200101-139029/COMPLETE
We recommend:
- After setting up your SFTP account, verify you can connect with a graphical SFTP tool.
- Manually create a test epoch containing generated CSV files and a COMPLETE file.
- Depending on the time of day, your epoch may be processed immediately or take several hours. If you are in the middle of debugging and would like more immediate processing, email tier2help@samegoal.com for assistance.
- Once a test epoch has been processed successfully, schedule nightly CSV file generation and use a script SFTP tool for automated upload.
lightbulb Tip
Common gotchas:
- Files misnamed.
- File missing a column.
- Misnamed column in a file.
- No date-time epoch directory.
- Files not loaded into the date-time epoch directory.
- Missing a COMPLETE file.