Combined setup instructions for both demographics integration and alerts and document viewer integration. Compatible with PowerSchool's Enhanced UI and district use of MFA within PowerSchool (replaces legacy setup instructions found here and here).
Demographics Integration
Imports student and parent demographics nightly from PowerSchool.
Alerts and Document Viewer Integration
- Displays an alert in PowerSchool when the student has a complete, currently effective program document (based on start and end dates) in SameGoal.
- When this alert is clicked, it displays documentation, including attachments, authored in SameGoal.
Alerts may be configured to display in a variety of areas throughout PowerSchool. By following the steps below, alerts will appear on the following PowerSchool pages:
- Power Admin: Alerts appear at the top of each student page (e.g. Quick Lookup, Student Attachments, etc.)
- Power Teacher: Alerts appear at the top of each student page (e.g. Quick Lookup, Schedule, and any other student page you add them to). For example, visit a class, select a student, then view the student's schedule.
- Parent Portal: Alerts may also be added at the district's option to the parent portal.
Steps
To setup these integrations with PowerSchool:- Create Alert_SG field
- Download plugin
- Install plugin
- Verify
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To setup the demographics integration only, skip adding the
SSO URL to your District Information page in step 3.
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If you are upgrading from an existing installation of the SameGoal plugin, we recommend removing all customizations that may have been added for alerts in PowerSchool. You may review the customizations that would have been added in steps 3, 4, and 5 of our
legacy instructions.
Log in to your PowerSchool Administrator account.
- Visit System Management (left menu) > Data > Database Extensions.
- In Choose the Database Table to Extend, select Students.
- In Choose Workflow Type, select Advanced Extension.
- Click Next and in Step 2 click Add.
- In the popup enter SAMEGOAL and click Apply.
- Click Next and for Step 3
- Click the button in the Delete column for the entry U_DEF_EXT_STUDENTS or U_DEF_EXT_STUDENTS0.
- Confirm that you want to delete the default extension table for the new extension you just added.
- Click Add.
- In the popup enter SG_ALERTS and click Apply.
- Click Next and in Step 4 click Add.
- In the popup enter:
- Name: ALERT_SG
- Type: String
- Length: 4000
- Click Apply.
- Click Submit.
- Log in to SameGoal as an administrator.
- Visit https://samegoal.com/iep/psPlugin (must be logged in).
- A district-specific plugin zip will download.
- If necessary, customize the plugin for your district's needs.
Log in to your PowerSchool Administrator account.
- Visit System Management (left menu) > Server > Plugin Configuration.
- Click the Install button in the top right.
- Plugin Installation File: Browse to select the plugin zip file.
- Click Install.
- A Plugin Registration dialog will appear and display plugin information. Click Register.
- If registration is successful, you will be redirected to the Plugin Configuration page.
- Once installed, the plugin will appear under Installed Plugins.
- Click the Enable/Disable checkbox to enable the plugin.
- Choose Enable in the pane that appears.
- Click the application icon located on the right side of the header bar.
- A side pane will appear. Right click SameGoal and select Copy Link Address. Paste this link elsewhere to save it temporarily.
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If an error occurs during plugin registration stating certain files already exist, remove these files then
re-install your plugin.
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If an error occurs during plugin registration stating "Registration was rejected by the publisher. Contact the publisher of this plugin for resolution.", contact tier2help@samegoal.com for assistance.
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When an error occurs during plugin registration, the
Client ID and
Client Secret may not populate into your district's
Settings (left menu) >
District Information >
Details page in SameGoal. You may try to
re-install your plugin. This time when you reach the
Plugin Registration dialog, copy/paste
Verify/Time URL,
Client ID and
Client Secret to a temporary location. If registration fails again, you may copy/paste this information into SameGoal manually (see below).
Log in to SameGoal as an administrator.
- Visit Settings (left menu) > District Information > Details.
- Verify that the plugin has automatically registered with SameGoal. PowerSchool Demographics and Alerts Integration should have the following fields populated from the Plugin Registration dialog in PowerSchool:
- API URL (from Verify/Time URL)
- OAuth ID (Client ID)
- OAuth Secret (Client Secret)
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If these fields were not populated during plugin registration due to an error, you may manually copy/paste them from the PowerSchool Plugin Registration page (see prior step in PowerSchool).
- Further configure integrations:
- Alerts: To enable alerts integration with PowerSchool, paste the saved link from the previous step into SSO URL.
- Demographics: To limit parent/guardian contacts imported from Contact Management in PowerSchool, optionally enter or check the following. Hover over the field tip for each option onscreen for more information.
- Relationship: Enter a semi-colon separated list of allowable values
- Original Contact Type: Enter a semi-colon separated list of allowable values
- Guardian flags:
- Check Lives With to limit contacts to those that have Lives With checked in PowerSchool
- Check Is Custodial to limit contacts to those that have Custody checked in PowerSchool
- Demographics: To limit students imported from PowerSchool to certain buildings only, click add PowerSchool building filter. Enter a comma-separated list of allowable building reporting IDs.
After the integration has run successfully:
- Student and parent demographics will populate SameGoal. After the integration has run successfully at least once, ask your staff to inspect a handful of students in SameGoal.
- Each student that has a completed and currently effective major Special Programs document (e.g. IEP) will display a SameGoal alert in PowerSchool. Clicking it will display a read-only copy of the document.
Contact tier2help@samegoal.com for assistance debugging.
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It may take up to 24 hours after PowerSchool information has been entered in SameGoal for integrations to run.
PowerSchool has advised districts to migrate data to Contact Management as the standard screen for contact information, including parents and guardians. Therefore, SameGoal's plugin pulls parent/guardian information exclusively from Contact Management.
If your district has moved some, but not all, contact information to Contact Management, you might consider:
- Using SameGoal's plugin as-is. Only contact information you have ported to Contact Management will be included in the integration. However, if your district has plans to migrate the remaining data to Contact Management in the short-term, this may be the best option.
- Customize your plugin
- Roll your own demographics CSV integration (alternative)
Consider two main options:
SameGoal's plugin pulls student information namely from the Demographics screen, and parent/guardian information from Contact Management. These are the standard fields for this information in PowerSchool, used by most districts.
If you would like to customize your plugin, you may do so. However, SameGoal does not provide plugin customization services. If your district has a team member on staff familiar with plugin development, or contracts with a PowerSchool plugins and professional services firm (eg MBA), this option might be suitable. However, please note that SameGoal does not assist in troubleshooting custom plugins.
Alternatively, your district may consider rolling your own demographics CSV integration, which receives standard support from SameGoal.
Rather than use a PowerSchool plugin to facilitate student/parent demographics integration, districts may opt to send CSV files nightly over SFTP for processing. Learn more
Tips for this integration method with PowerSchool:
- Both students.csv and guardians.csv must be sent nightly.
- When generating students.csv, column SIS Internal ID must be populated with the dcid from the students table in PowerSchool, in order for the alerts integration to also work.
- After setting up an SFTP feed, update the plugin to disable it from overwriting your new demographics information nightly:
- Delete the existing plugin in PowerSchool:
- Visit System Management (left menu) > Server > Plugin Configuration.
- Search for the SameGoal plugin, then click the Delete button.
- Re-download the plugin (see 2. Download plugin) and modify to remove demographics integration support:
- Unzip the plugin.
- Delete the files that generate the students.csv and guardians.csv files:
- queries_root/samegoal.guardians.named_queries.xml
- queries_root/samegoal.students.named_queries.xml
- Select all files/directories remaining in the parent directory. Right click and choose "Compress" (on most operating systems) to re-zip the files.
- Install the updated plugin zip file (see 3. Install plugin)
From time to time, it may be necessary to re-install the SameGoal plugin. To do so:
- Delete the existing plugin in PowerSchool:
- Visit System Management (left menu) > Server > Plugin Configuration
- Search for the SameGoal plugin, then click the Delete button.
- Re-download the plugin as necessary (see 2. Download plugin).
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Plugin version number is included in the plugin filename. If a certain feature/functionality requires a specific version, verify in the filename.
- Re-install the plugin (see 3. Install plugin)
To inspect and/or customize the plugin after download, unzip the plugin:
- plugin.xml - Tables/fields accessed in PowerSchool
- queries_root/samegoal.guardians.named_queries.xml - Named queries used to generate guardians.csv
- queries_root/samegoal.students.named_queries.xml - Named queries used to generate students.csv
- web_root/wildcards/teachers_title_student_end_css.samegoal.student.alert.txt - Wildcard file
- web_root/wildcards/title_student_end_css.samegoal.student.alert.txt - Wildcard file