StudentInformationConversion Overview

ProgressBook Suite – Spring Retreat 2015Lora Lawrence, SSST

Types of Conversions

▪ Full or Partial Conversion– New district, with full or partial data

▪ Empty District Setup– Enter Cherwell ticket requesting setup

▪ Include: District Name, District Code, District IRN, School Name(s), School Code(s), School IRN(s)

▪ Conversion of Specific Data– E.g., lockers & combos, student emails, contacts, transportation, community

service, AP exams,…

ITC-to-ITC District Move

Conversion Documents – dasl.info

District Implementation Plan

▪ This document provides lots of detail and info on how to perform a successful conversion, including planning meetings, and assigning staff to be responsible for the various steps of the conversion process.

▪ We highly recommend getting the district to sign-off each step of the conversion process. This will help get them committed and involved in the process.

▪ The conversion is more than just loading data into the StudentInformation database. Training and data validations are critical.

District Implementation Survey

▪ To streamline your conversion, be sure to gather info before you begin your conversion

▪ This will be used to setup calendars, terms, marking patterns

▪ This also gets the district thinking about what types of data they intend to convert: homerooms, lockers, fees, alerts, medical, transportation.

Conversion Guide

▪ The Conversion Guide describes each template in each module of the conversion, and provides a description of each data element on the templates.

▪ Alternate EMIS templates are also described, if the EMIS flat files are not available and the EMIS data needs to be loaded via spreadsheets.

▪ The conversion process is broken out into functional modules – so you can easily determine which areas of data you wish to convert.

Conversion Guide - Modules

District & School Data

Configuration Data

Student Data

Scheduling Data

Course History Data

Attendance Data

Membership Data

– Homeroom Data

– Locker Data

– Fee Data

– Assessment Data

– Medical Data

– Other Data

Conversion Checklist

▪ This is our working checklist – to keep track of where we are along the way.

▪ Includes each possible template to be loaded, in addition to scripts used

▪ Also includes manual steps required to setup calendars and school year initializations

Manual Setups

▪ Run SYI and Calendar Wizard in current year

▪ Various setups – course terms

– marking patterns

– DASL Options

– GPA sets

– registration defaults

– difficulty points

▪ Run SYI and Calendar Wizard in new year

▪ Run Calendar Wizard for past years, for course history

Conversion Spreadsheets

▪ Each template contains a header row. Do not make any changes to the column labels in the header row.

▪ Each template should contain a worksheet named ‘Sheet1’. Do not make any changes to this worksheet name.

▪ All cells in each template must be formatted as Text.

▪ Any extra columns added to the spreadsheets will be ignored.

Conversion Spreadsheet Templates

Spreadsheets can be .xls or .xlsx. Recommend .xlsx for large files like course history.

Conversion Spreadsheet Templates

Each template includes sample data. Also refer to StudentInformationConversion Guide for details about each template.

Conversion Spreadsheets – Important Info

▪ Extract process should be repeatable

▪ As data is updated and errors are resolved, additional extracts will be needed.

▪ Manually updating spreadsheet data after it is extracted may be difficult to repeat reliably.

▪ Data refreshes will be needed for training & testing, and for the final load.

Conversion Files - EMIS

▪ EMIS data can be loaded directly from the EMIS flat files – In Chapter 5 formats, as .txt files

▪ This includes: FD, FS, GI, FN, GJ, GE, GG, GC, FB, FE– More to be added soon for FY16

▪ If the EMIS flat files aren’t available when we first start theconversiontesting, dummy records will be created for FD,FS,FN.

Conversion Program

Program uses boo scripts

Data is validated, keys are checked, and data moved to Staging tables in database.

Errors are logged.

Once the data is clean, it will be loaded into the database.

Conversion Timeline

▪ Best to start process as early as possible, especially winter or early spring

▪ Need plenty of time to write extracts, review and fix errors, review data in the application, and perform district training.

▪ Just because data loads to database successfully, doesn’t necessarily mean the data is correct. Compare transcripts and GPAs between StudentInformation and the source SIS.

▪ The final load will usually be performed after the EMIS cutoff in late July.

Conversion Timeline

▪ Codes can be setup directly in the application. Use codes that will be referenced by later spreadsheets.

▪ Go lives are only scheduled between school years, so that EMIS data is consistent during a fiscal year.

▪ Ideally, scheduling should be done in the source SIS. Course catalog, master schedule, and student schedules for current and future school years will load to SI.

▪ Data loads for the current school year (2014-15), and students will then be promoted into the next school year (2015-16). Fall init will prep the FY16 EMIS data.

Responsible Parties (who does what)

▪ District or ITC– Extracts data from source SIS

– Populates spreadsheets

▪ SSST– Runs conversion process to load spreadsheets

– Provide error logs back to ITC

▪ District or ITC– Reviews error logs

– Re-extracts data with updates

Lessons Learned – Extracts

▪ It’s up to you if the district or ITC will be responsible for data extracts. Some districts have this expertise, others do not. Also consider the availability of district staff after school year ends.

▪ May want to consider receiving a ‘data dump’ from the source SIS, and load this data to SQL Server or Access database for ease in extracting. Allows greater control over extract process. When a new data file is received, the same extracts can be used with the fresh data.

▪ PowerSchool extracts may use the extract tool in PowerSchool to extract the data. Make sure this process is repeatable. Or, if you can get a copy of the PowerSchool database, this can be converted to SQL Server.

Lessons Learned – Share Info

▪ Contact other ITCs that have done similar conversions.

▪ Recent conversions have been done from:– ACE / ADM2000

– PowerSchool

– Maestro

– CIMS

– eSchool

Lessons Learned – Course History

▪ For course history loads, all data can be loaded as manual marks, especially for past years.

▪ If you decide to load regular marks, the course catalog, schedules, and marking patterns are required.

▪ Load course history for years needed for transcripts. Elementary and middle school marks aren’t needed, unless they are for HS credit.

▪ In order to load course history, remember to load the codes necessary for those past years. E.g., mark types, alpha marks.

ITC-to-ITC District Move

▪ This type of ‘conversion’ does not use the same conversion process

▪ Instead, it uses the bcp utility to bulk copy data between databases

▪ All data for a specified district is extracted from the source database, and then inserted to an empty database at the target ITC.

▪ Then a series of scripts are run to massage the data and prepare it for the move into the production database at the target ITC.

▪ Security is NOT copied to the new ITC

▪ To initiate this process, the district needs to provide written documentation to the Executive Director and the affected ITCs.