Preparing Data for SchoolNow

In this article, we'll explain how to prepare and export your data to CSV files and drop to SFTP

SchoolNow will be sending out your schools communications as email, SMS text messages and voice phone calls. We need to make sure we have all the students parent and guardian contacts along with their correct contact information.

Note: SchoolNow does not send communications directly to students.

SchoolNow pulls data from the CSV files that your Student Information System (SIS) is scheduled to drop to our SFTP directory. It is always a one-way stream of data... from you to us. We do not (and cannot) write data back to your SIS.

Parents and guardians can login to their portal to manage their contact information, and preferences (i.e. tell us if they want a text message, voice message, email, or a combination of each). When these preferences are set, they are stored in the portal.

Exception: Some customers choose to manage their contact information and preferences in the SIS, and in this case, the parent portal on our side is disabled and we direct parents back to the school.

If a user changes a key piece of information, such as their email address, or phone number, we provide a mechanism to report such changes back to the school so you can update the information in your schools SIS for the next data sync.

There are three steps for a customer to follow.

Prepare and export your data as CSV files into an SFTP drop that we'll provide.
Schedule a nightly export/sync to overwrite the files in the SFTP.
Review your data in SchoolNow with your SchoolNow onboarding representative.

We provide data schemas and templates to show you what data is needed based on the SIS you are using. If you have any problems preparing the data in the needed format, reach out to our support desk. We have a dedicated data engineer who, with the proper access to your SIS, can assist in getting the data exported as needed.

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