This guide provides you with a checklist that will help ensure your summer and return to school go smoothly. You may have other considerations depending on your particular needs; as always, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to the support team.
* Many districts return to school within the same few weeks. There will be a higher volume of incoming requests during this time. The support team thanks you for your patience as they work to resolve all customer requests as quickly as possible.
“Call Before You Dig”
Summer is often an opportunity for district IT departments to deploy or update their systems, but it is important to remember that you may have some data integration involving systems on your network and Connect. Changes to the data sources, the network firewall, server certificates, or directory server structure can all adversely affect integrated services. They can also affect when the previous school year's data is replaced with the upcoming school years, and all this can affect your ability to message effectively.
At a minimum, we encourage you to review the data in our system before and after a change to systems that might affect it. If you have any questions about your data integration or authentication services, Connect Support can:
- Evaluate the risk of disruption with your network team and help mitigate risk.
- Disable integration imports during the maintenance window to prevent errant data from flowing into our system.
- Re-enable and test imports after the maintenance window to assure the services you depend on are working.
- Assist you with alternative ways of maintaining communication during a service outage.
If you have any questions, you may contact Connect Support at:
Connect Support
1-866-360-2155
ConnectSupport@finalsite.com
Send Your Files
As a best practice, please verify data transfers from your Student Information System (SIS) are successfully working a week before school begins. If we are retrieving the data on your behalf, review known changes for the new academic year and notify us if those changes haven’t been made available in our system.
* If new files of information are being sent, please make sure that the files are titled and formatted the same as the previous files and delivered to the same location.
SIS-Specific Considerations
Some student information systems behave differently than others, requiring additional steps or making information available at different stages over summer.
Aeries Rollover Instructions
The Aeries SIS generates a new database every academic year, so to maintain Connect’s integration, it is critical that you update Connect’s automated connection information to point to the new database once you roll over.
The Aeries Rollover instructions will assist you through the process, which can be found below.
Please note that some districts have reported to us that they needed to restart the server before the ODBC connection settings became active. This has not been widely encountered, but if you see the connection to the old database persists after applying changes, it may be an early troubleshooting step.
1. From the Control Panel Click on Administrative tools
2. In the Administrative tools click on ODBC Data Source (64 Bit) or (32Bit) Most connections are 64-bit now.
3. Click on the System DSN tab up top to see a list of connections. Select the connection used for Connect.
4. Then click on Configure.
5. On the next screen just click next
6. Enter Credentials if required then click next
7. On the next screen you will see a list of databases to connect to.
8. On the top the checkmark should be checked to change the default Database to. If the Database starts with DST18000 and then the name of the district it is pointing to the past year’s data. Look through the list and locate DST19000 with the district name and click to select. (See Red Arrow) If DST19000 does not yet exist the district needs to complete the rollover before we can point to the new database.
9. Click next to move to the next screen and click finish
10. Once the connection is finished it will present you with an option to test.
11. If the test is successful, the change is complete!
Wengage
As you start to roll over to the new school year, please remember to adjust your Wengage Script to point to the new year. Just navigate to the '.vbs' file, right-click to 'Edit', scroll down to the 'Change Wengage/Institution Specifics as needed' section and change the school year.
You may edit the file if your user or Hash Password provided by Wengage has changed, or if the site needs to be corrected.
Please contact Helpdesk if you have any further questions.
Districts With PowerSchool
Regardless of academic year, your system will draw student, parents, and contact information for all students designated “Active” in your system.
Updates to organizations
Let your CSM know if your district or school needs to add any new organizations, or remove old ones.
For new organizations, provide the following information:
- School Name
- School Type (such as high school or middle school)
- Address
- Phone number
- Time zone
- Organization ID
- Indicate which imports the school will be added to
- Indicate the task schedules to set up
* Adding a new organization may take 3-5 days to complete.
Set Automated Notifications for the New School Year
If you stopped notifications for the summer break, you can reset them so that attendance and cafeteria balance messages are sent.
Forgot Login ID or Password?
- If any staff members forget login credentials, the district or school Super User will be able to confirm the login ID and reset password.
- If any super user administrator or principal forgets the password, select the Forgot password link to email a temporary password. The email will be sent to the address available for the login ID.
Training Staff Members
If you have a new group of staff members who need training, please contact your account managers to set up a training seminar.
Check out the online training videos.
For any back-to-school issues, contact support at 866-360-2155 or connectsupport@finalsite.com