Integrate with SSO and SIS providers.
What is SSO and why is it used?
Single Sign-On (SSO) allows you to use your Google, Microsoft, or Clever profile to authenticate you when logging into Formative. If your school account is tied to one of these providers, we encourage you to use SSO for efficiency.
If you don't use one of those providers, you can create a password for your Formative login. Students and teachers can use either method.
With Formative you can sync rosters with your Student Information System (SIS).
Syncing rosters with your SIS is one way to set up all teacher and student accounts and to automatically place all students and teachers into their classes.
Step 1: Check if you have software that supports OneRoster
In order to set up a OneRoster connection, you will need an SIS or other software system component that allows access to rosters using OneRoster 1.1 API or CSV files. Aeries, ClassLink, PowerSchool Unified, and Infinite Campus are some examples of software that support OneRoster exports using the API integration method.
Some of our customers do not have any system that supports OneRoster. In this case, some have adopted ClassLink, which can be used to add OneRoster support to a variety of SIS systems (read more about that here). A few others have implemented a custom software solution on their end to generate OneRoster files and then upload them to an SFTP server.
Once you have identified a way to provide us with OneRoster data, you will have to consult its documentation (assuming it is not a custom solution) to determine how to set up a OneRoster export and provide us with the necessary information to access it.
Step 2: Get OneRoster Sync Credentials Or Set up OneRoster SFTP Uploads
For OneRoster API integrations, you are given a OneRoster Base URL, Consumer Key, and Consumer Secret.
Blackbaud users: your base URL is based on your Blackbaud access URL. If your Blackbaud domain name is yourschool.myschoolapp.com, then your Base URL will be https://yourschool.myschoolapp.com/ims/oneroster/v1p1
You can encrypt the consumer secret into a secure sharing URL using https://dead-drop.me. Send the Base URL, Consumer Key, and Consumer Secret to your implementation specialist.
Note: if you are using ClassLink, you can instruct members to share roster data with us instead of sending us the credentials. Check out this article for more details.
If your system does not support OneRoster API integration but exports CSV files that must be added to a ZIP file and uploaded to an SFTP site, please contact us to set up an SFTP account you can use to upload the file.
We only need these files for rostering from zipped CSV files:
- academicSessions.csv
- classes.csv
- enrollments.csv
- orgs.csv
- users.csv
You can optionally provide courses.csv.
Step 3: Establish scope of the import
In addition to the OneRoster access information, we will want to know which organizations (schools, districts, departments, etc.) you wish to import to help us validate the data we receive; this information also helps avoid importing the wrong users. We will want to know the NCES ID (or other government ID, if available) of each school and district, too, so we can avoid data duplication.
Since your organization will have some degree of control over the users that OneRoster imports, we restrict the imported users to a list of emails and email address domains that we can confirm you control. We will need to know all the email domains that your district owns to enable the import of those users via OneRoster. If you have a subset of users outside your controlled email domain (contractors, for example), we can also accommodate a small number of specific, individual email addresses.
Step 4: Make sure we have the information we need for the import
After doing all of the above, be prepared to provide us with the following information if you haven't already done so:
- If API sync is supported: OneRoster API consumer key, secret, and Base URL (do not send these if data is shared using ClassLink)
- List of organizations to roster
- If applicable, NCES / government identifiers for each organization
- Email domains of the users to import
- When to start the import (if not immediately)
Additional Notes
- Existing Classes: Classes imported from OneRoster do not link or merge with existing classes, so you will have to decide what to do with duplicate classes for teachers who have already set up their classes. It is easiest for teachers to keep existing classes and archive the OneRoster-created classes when they get duplicates. The downside of this process: those classes will not automatically update from the SIS, but existing assignments to the class will not have to be copied to the new class.
- Teacher Login: Teachers will receive emails with some information about their new account, including how to set their password if they need instructions. If they use SSO logins (Google, Clever, Canvas, Microsoft, LTI, etc.), they won't need to create a password.
- Student Login: If students cannot use a SSO login, teachers can set their passwords via the classes page. Students with access to their email can also use the "forgot password" feature to set their password. We also offer the option of setting each student's password to their "identifier" (e.g. Student ID) by default, although doing so is not the most secure approach.
- Administrator Users: Although we normally only set up students and teachers using OneRoster, we can use it to control Formative administrators. If you provide us with a list of the members you believe should be formative administrators, we can check whether that information matches OneRoster user data and then update OneRoster in addition to students and teachers. If this information does not match, then Formative administrator access will have to be managed manually.
- Class Start & End Dates: If OneRoster data includes start and end dates for classes, then classes will not be created if they are more than fourteen days away. Classes created in the past that are more than fourteen days old will be marked as archived.
The following platforms provide a OneRoster API that is known to work with Formative:
