What is Clever?
Clever is a secure data sharing service.
Today’s schools share their data with more and more institutions and vendors, and rather than setting up a customized means of sharing for each relationship, a school can push data to Clever, and it will act as a secure, central repository.
Benefits of Using Clever?
Rather than setting up separate (and often times very specific) processes for multiple data sharing needs, a District can put school data into one location and share it in highly customizable ways.
To illustrate, imagine that you would like to share an evening’s activities (e.g. dinner menu, events, guest list, etc.) with a number of friends that you are entertaining. You could send the information to each person and continue to send updates as the details change, or you could make the information available in one location and share the location with all of the guests. Simply put, Clever allows for data sharing.
In most instances, a school District will upload the District data to Clever, and then share the data with vendors or other third parties as needed. Clever supports numerous controls for determining what data is shared with which parties, control of the data is retained by the District. In addition, as the District continues to upload data into Clever, the most current information regarding the schools is made available.
Getting Data To Enriching Students
As with all data maintenance tasks, data flows from a school’s student management system to Clever using either a manual or automated sftp transfer. It then is pulled from Clever to Enriching students.
If a school indicates that Clever is the system of record for their data, it is understood that all the data in Clever can be trusted by Enriching Students. There is no provision to analyze the data for validity regarding deletes or updates. When a record is changed in SIS and pushed to Clever, the data will be updated in Enriching Students.
From Clever to Enriching Students
Data is moved from Clever into Enriching Students during two distinct processes: initial import and periodic updates.
Initial Import
As the description implies, this is performed when a school is on-boarded into Enriching Students. This import is a one-time occurrence and becomes the baseline for all future “syncs” to the Clever data.
Periodic Update
Following the initial import, all data changes that are pushed to Clever will also be imported into Enriching Students on a daily basis.
With the start of a new school year, a school that has data in Enriching Students from the previous year will be performing an “update” when new data is pushed to Clever. This is because a school’s data is retained from year to year for historical reporting purposes.
Getting Started With Clever?
Because Enriching Students is simply a subscriber to the data service that Clever offers, we will not duplicate the details related to setting up and using the service. This information is well documented and kept current by Clever. You find out more at Clever.com.
How Do I Share A School’s Data?
After successfully uploading data, a District Admin will log in to Clever, go to the “Applications” section and then select the application(s) that need to see the data. Enriching Students is listed as one of the available applications.
You can add Enriching Students by going to this link and looking for “Enriching Students” using the search box.
Managing Student Data
As students enter or leave schools, their user information is updated in Clever. If a student’s movements are within a district (e.g. from one school to another within the district), the student’s email and Clever Id are expected to remain the same. This is important to Enriching Students, as a student’s email is also their username. This is used in performing updates and other data maintenance processes.
The following describes, in high-level terms, the approach that is taken to manage specific changes to student data.
Deleting a Student
When a student is “deleted” from a school in a Clever district, the student will be marked as “deleted” (within Enriching Students) during the next Clever data-sync. In actuality, the student is marked for deletion but will remain in the system for a short time. This approach is taken to facilitate the re-introduction of a student if in the event that a student is unintentionally deleted.
Restoring an “Accidentally-Deleted” Student
A student is retained in Enriching Students for a period of time after they have been deleted from a school. This approach is in line with the data management policy subscribed to by Clever and allows for a student to be “restored” to Enriching Students, for a time, after the student has been deleted.
For example, if a student is inadvertently deleted, and then re-added to the school data the next day, the school data will sync to Clever and Enriching Students will recognize the student during the next data-sync. Although the student’s scheduled future appointments will no longer be in the Enriching Student’s system, the student will be reactivated and their user information will be the same as it was before the delete. This approach allows for accurate historical reporting of the student’s activity. As part of the “restore” process, all pre-booking of appointments takes place when this option is set at the school level. The student can then be re-scheduled as before.
What If I Don’t Want to Use Clever?
No Worries; both the initial import and any nightly updates can be performed using .csv files.
The process typically works like this: A school exports data from their Student Management System and then, by means of either SFTP or FTP, the data is then uploaded to our secure servers.
The above process supports the use a file transfer client (such as FileZilla) or you can script the process for an automated task that will export and upload school data on a schedule.
Enriching Students SFTP and FTP credentials will be provided as part of the initial setup process.
Note: Once Clever is selected as the “system of record” or the source system from which Enriching Students obtains data, the school no longer has the option to import data to Enriching Students with .csv files.
Initial or Yearly Import
At the beginning of each academic year, schools import their current data into Enriching Students.
Historical data is retained within Enriching Students, so each year’s import will add to or adjust the data from the last year.
Automated Imports / Exports
For assistance in importing data on a nightly basis, please visit:
SFTP Setup
If you would like to import data to or export data from Enriching Students by means of SFTP, this tutorial will be of benefit.
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