Q: Can I automatically import data from Skyward into PowerSchool Learning?
A: Yes. This article will walk you through the process to automatically import data into PowerSchool Learning. To complete this task you will need to create a report within Skyward, automate the export of the report, and finally send the data to PowerSchool Learning via SFTP.
This process is available to all Skyward customers. You can always contact Skyward's support teamor your Skyward representative for assistance with any tasks in Skyward.
Setting Up Your Skyward Report
1. Log in to your Skyward Administrative console.
2. Click Administration on the top navigation bar.
3. Click Exports - EX under SkyBuild - SB*.
* If you do not see this option, please contact your main Skyward Administrator. It is a security feature of Skyward that can be enabled by an Administrator.
4. Navigate to Export File Builder - EF under Exports - EX.
5. Build a new report by clicking the Add button on the right hand side of the page.
6. Choose Other for the Product Type. This report will be the framework within which you will be building specific exports tailored to PowerSchool Learning's Skyward Full Import specification.
7. Click the down arrow next to the name of the report.
8. Select Add Export File.
9. Fill in the Export File Details (see screenshot below), then edit export fields as needed (see next step). Under the report, you will need to create a minimum of four exports (per the Skyward Import Specification). You will need Users (two separate reports exporting Skyward students, Skyward teachers), Classes, and Roster entries. Your PowerSchool Learning Integrations Advisor would be happy to work with you to the best of their ability to help you pull the data you need.
10. Below is an example of what a Classes export might look like. Some things to note about this report:
- a.The Entity is referring to a specific school - in this case, 400 stands for High School. By setting a Low and High of 400, this means this report only pulls Active (see Status) Classes from the 2015 school year in the High School entity.
- b. The Field column refers to the field in Skyward.
- c. The Heading is the title of the column when exported out and needs to be consistent with the Skyward Full Import specification.
- d. The Filler field exists for fields for which there is no information in Skyward, but it is a field that needs to be exported (for example, if you are not a Google Apps school, you'd still need the google_id column but will want to leave it blank. You can use Filler to do so). To access Filler, navigate to Edit Select Fields -> Field Area (Miscellaneous) -> Filler.
- e. Constant Value is a SkyBuild field that can be used to assign a constant value to be exported - for example, in the third screenshot below, you can set all users in the skyward_users_student.csv file to have a user type of “T”, since that is not a readily available Skyward field.
Please note: See the bottom of this article for screenshots containing the setup for other files you may need.
With your report set up containing at least the four required files (skyward_users_*.csv, classes.csv, roster.csv), you can now set up automation so that this report is automatically run at a certain time, generating the four required csv files (and whatever optional files you wish to create).
Automating the Export of the Skyward Report
1. Click Edit on the right-hand side with your report highlighted to pull up the Export Interface Maintenance screen.
2. Note the UNC Path to see what folder the report is exported to. You may want to send the exports to a folder on your Skyward server.
3. Click Back to exit the report builder.
4. Click the My Print Queue button.
5. Select Tasks on the right hand side.
6. Select Scheduled Tasks.
7. Add a new scheduled task for the PowerSchool Learning report. If you need any assistance creating a scheduled task, please reach out to your Skyward representative.
- a. You'll want to automate this task to coincide with the SFTP imports into PowerSchool Learning, which occur at 5:30 AM and 4:30 PM EST every day. As long as the import.zip file is in your SFTP account by 5:30 AM and 4:30 PM EST, the file will be imported at that time.
Once the task is set up, the report will be exported out of Skyward to the specified path at the specified time. The next step is to automate the import of these files into PowerSchool Learning.
Automating the Import of Skyward Files into PowerSchool Learning
1. To automate the import of the Skyward files created above into PowerSchool Learning, we will use SFTP, which you can read more about here.
- a. First, automate the export process from Skyward using SkyBuild. This is what will be done in the steps earlier in this article.
- b. Reach out to the PowerSchool Learning support team, who can set up an SFTP account for you on our server.
If your instance of Skyward is hosted...
i. Reach out to Skyward's support team to obtain the Visual Basic Studio (VBS) script.
ii. Create a cmd file that runs the VBS script for each of the reports (e.g. skyward_classes.csv, skyward_roster.csv, etc.).
iii. Set up a cron job that runs the cmd file.
iv. Finally, run the batch file that zips the the csv files and sends them to PowerSchool Learning's SFTP account, as is outlined in this article.
If your instance of Skyward is on premise...
i. Set up the automated file push in Skyward from Skyward to a folder on a server via the UNC path field. You can set up the location to which the files are pushed by navigating in Skyward to Administration -> Exports -> Export File Builder.
Note the UNC path above - in this case, the files from SkyBuild will be sent to a folder called "Haiku" (you can name this however you would like) on the server \\10.1.0.208. In this case, that is a remote server hosted by Skyward for this particular example.
ii. Set up the automated by following the steps detailed here. Below you can find some screenshots that further illustrate the process.
Above is the Haiku folder within the \\10.1.0.208 server. In this folder will be the csv files generated by SkyBuild, as set up in the Export File Builder.
iii. On the same server is another folder containing the batch scripts and files necessary to take the csv files from the Haiku folder and push them to your SFTP account. This is what is outlined in this article.
Congratulations! You have now automate the export and import of data from Skyward into PowerSchool Learning!
Screenshots Continued
skyward_users_teacher.csv
*Please note: your google_id may be in a different location.
skyward_users_student.csv
*Please note: your google_id may be in a different location.
roster.csv
users_levels.csv (optional)
