January 2023
Feature Overview
Edsby is designed to fit into an ecosystem of solutions running within an education organization. SchoolMessenger is a widely deployed solution that provides advanced notification services covering a range of applications including attendance workflows. This bulletin describes how Edsby’s integration with SchoolMessenger handles a variety of needs within an education organization.
The key high level usage scenarios include:
- Unresolved attendance incidents in Edsby are sent to SchoolMessenger so SchoolMessenger can notify parents (e.g., via a voice call or text message). These are called Edsby SchoolMessenger attendance incident exports.
- Planned Absences entered in SchoolMessenger (perhaps by a parent calling a 1-800 number and entering the details via touch tone phone) can be imported and applied in Edsby. These are called Edsby SafeArrivals imports.
Edsby SchoolMessenger Attendance Incidents Export Support
Edsby can generate an attendance incident export compatible with the legacy SchoolConnects product and the current SchoolMessenger product. These exports have been in production at a number of Edsby sites over the years. The SchoolMessenger Attendance Incident export includes the following columns:
|
Column Number |
Column Name |
Data Type |
Description |
|
1 |
StudentID |
String |
Student identifier |
|
2 |
SchoolCode |
String |
School Identifier |
|
3 |
Name |
String |
Student’s name |
|
4 |
Phone |
String |
Primary contact phone number |
|
5 |
Grade |
String |
Student’s grade |
|
6 |
Date |
String |
Date the incident occurred on |
|
7 |
Absence |
String |
List of Period IDs absent |
|
8 |
Late |
String |
List of Period IDs late |
|
9 |
Language |
String |
Primary contact preferred language |
|
10 |
|
String |
Primary contact email address |
Approaches For Deploying SchoolMessenger Attendance Incidents Exports
Edsby supports three different deployment scenarios for getting SchoolMessenger Attendance Incident data to SchoolMessenger. These are described below.
Manual Export / Manual Import: With this approach a school attendance administrator clicks on the export button to in the Edsby attendance incident zoom to generate a SchoolMessenger attendance incident export file for their school. They then manually upload the file to SchoolMessenger, which then takes care of the appropriate notification sequences (such as making phone calls).
Manual Initiation / Automated Import: Edsby’s EdsbyLink facility provides very powerful ways to import and export data to and from your Edsby system. Instead of having Attendance Administrators directly export SchoolMessenger files Edsby can be configured to enable them to request the file be transferred to SchoolMessenger directly. This results in an export request being queued for EdsbyLink. EdsbyLink can be configured to look for such requests on a time basis (e.g., every 10 minutes) and then automatically transfer any queued files to a destination that SchoolMessenger can monitor and upload from. This approach leaves the school administrator in control of the timing of the export, but greatly simplifies the mechanics of doing the data transfer.
Automated Initiation / Automated Import: EdsbyLink can also be configured to provide for an automated initiation of the SchoolMessenger attendance incident export at a pre-specified time or times (e.g., 4:00pm). With this approach EdsbyLink will “pull” the exports for each school and ship them all over to SchoolMessenger for uploading and subsequent processing.
Please speak with Edsby Support if you’re interested in deploying any of these EdsbyLink-based integration options.
Edsby Planned Absence Imports from SchoolMessenger
SchoolMessenger provides the ability to export planned absence information it gathers (perhaps by touchtone phone) on a timed basis. Edsby has been enhanced to support this proprietary SchoolMessenger format as specified in the SchoolMessenger “SafeArrival Guide for Downloading Absence Reasons” document dated April 23, 2018. Edsby support handles the format that includes planned absence information for multiple schools. The SchoolMessenger planned absence export record format includes information such as School ID, Student ID, Start Date, End Date, Start Time, End Time and reason for absence. Note that for this to work properly Edsby, SchoolMessenger and the SIS need to be configured with a consistent set of absence reason codes. Again, please contact Edsby Support if you wish to explore turning this option on.