Each district has a SameGoal SFTP account. This account is most often used to store ephemeral data files uploaded and processed nightly for integrations with your student information system. It can also be used to transfer large amounts of data securely during district onboarding.
Each SameGoal SFTP account uses public key authentication to ensure secure access. Public key authentication is a more secure means of identifying yourself to a login server than using a password. When using public key authentication, you:
- Generate a public/private key pair consisting of a public key (which everybody is allowed to know) and a private key (which you keep secret and do not give to anybody)
- Your public key is installed on the server you wish to connect to (in this case, on the SameGoal SFTP server in an authorized_keys file) and your private key is kept on your local workstation.
- When you use your private key to connect, it generates a signature. A signature created using your private key cannot be forged by anybody who does not have that key, but anyone who has your public key can verify that a particular signature is genuine.
Each SFTP account has the following directory structure:
- /upload/ - Uploads to this directory are automatically detected and inspected by SameGoal processes.
- If uploaded data files are recognized to be in a format expected for a particular integration, SameGoal will automatically process the files.
- If the uploaded information format is not recognized (e.g. a one-time data dump from a previous system), the data will be ignored until a SameGoal staff member is notified and manually processes.
- This directory is the only directory the district can write to.
- If the district uses an SFTP-based (push-based) integration, a district process will write to this directory.
- If the district uses a SIF-based (pull-based) integration, a SameGoal process will write to this directory.
- /upload-processed/ - After an epoch directory in /upload/ is automatically processed, it is moved to this directory with additional logging inserted to indicate whether processing succeeded or failed. Processed epochs are stored in this directory for a short while (typically 30 days), but may be deleted at any time without notice.
- /downloads/ - This directory contains information each district may download from their SameGoal environment. Besides the two directories below, districts may see additional directories depending on integrations available in their state. These directories are empty if not used.
- /downloads/backups/ - PostgreSQL backups of district data.
- /downloads/docviewer/ - Daily epochs of document viewer data for optional use in the generic alerts & document viewer integration.
- /downloads/pdfs/ - Documents extracted from SameGoal. Empty except when scheduled.
- /downloads/*.zip - ZIP archive(s) of documents from prior systems imported during implementation.
There are three parts to setting up an SFTP connection:
- Generate a key pair
- Install your public key
- Verify you can connect