As the new academic year approaches, it’s time to:
- Update your Microsoft Data Sync (SDS).
- Archive old classes.
- Create new teams for the new academic year.
This blog post is a step-by-step guide on how to update your SDS for the new academic year.
Cloud Design Box Customers
If you’re a Cloud Design Box customer, you don’t need to worry about this as we’ll do this for you. You should’ve received a rollover form from us to give us the info we need to prepare your SDS data for the new academic year.
How we can help you manage your SDS
Along with our SharePoint intranet, assignment tools and other services to help teachers save time, we also provide the following solutions to make end of year easier for teachers and students:
- Centralised subject sites to avoid moving/copying teacher resources.
- Managed rollover process – we will archive old teams for you.
- Early creation and update of next year’s teams – reach into the future to create teams early.
- Managed SDS service – we will setup and support automating classes from MIS data.
- Class dashboard time machine – view archived classes quickly and easily.
Roll over your classes for the new academic year
If you are not a Cloud Design Box customer and would like to roll over your classes for the new academic year, simply follow the steps in the rest of this blog post.
Create a Group Report
1. Open School Data Sync. If you’re unsure where this is, go to Microsoft 365 Admin Centre and select All Admin Centres. You can find School Data Sync here.
2. Under Sync Profiles, select the profile you’d like to update.
3. Hit Group Cleanup for further detailed instructions if required.
4. Tap People in the top left of the menu.
5. Select the Memberships tab.
6. Hit Group Report.
You might have a previous Group Report here but make sure you choose Generate New Report.
7. Tap Generate New Report. This may take a few minutes to generate.
8. Download the .csv file by selecting the Download Icon. This file can be opened in MS Excel.
Extract the teams you’d like to archive
1. Open the .csv file.
2. Convert the data into a table:
- i. Highlight all of the the data.
- ii. On the Home tab, hit Format as Table.
- iii. Make sure My Table has Headers has been ticked.
- iv. Tap Okay.
This enables you to sort the data to easily find the teams you’d like to archive. You may want to sort the teams you’d like to archive by:
- Name (Prefix ID)
- Created Date/Time
- Section ID
- Course Name
- Course Subject
- Status
For example, if you want to filter out a Name or Prefix ID:
- i. Tap the arrow next to the column header.
- ii. Hit Text Filters.
- iii. Select the desired filter. For example, Contains….
- iv. Enter the School Code or the appropriate code for the classes you’d like to archive.
- v. Choose AND to include both search terms if you entered multiple filter terms and you’d like data containing both of your defined search terms.
- vi. Choose OR to include both search terms if you entered multiple filter terms and you’d like data containing either of your defined search terms.
- vii. Tap Okay.
Check the list to make sure you have a list of all the classes you’d like to archive.
3. Create a new tab.
4. Copy and paste the list of classes you’d like to archive.
5. Delete the old SectionUsage tab (right-click on the tab and hit Delete).
6. Rename the new tab as SectionUsage so it’s in the same format.
7. Save the file. It’s important that the file name is exactly the same as the original name.
Complete the group cleanup
1. Go back into School Data Sync.
2. Hit People on the left-hand menu.
3. Select Group Cleanup.
4. Tap Select Group Report.
5. Upload the file you saved above.
6. Hit Upload Group Report.
7. Tap Next.
8. Make sure Archive Group is ticked.
9. Tap Run Cleanup.
This may take a while to run. You may need to check to make sure all the classes have been archived correctly as sometimes the odd classes can be missed.
The classes are still available in Read Only mode. The users in those class teams will be frozen in time and it’s still possible to find these students in the future. More info on how to find archived classes can be found here.
You will be notified once the group cleanup has been completed. This can take 10 minutes or longer.
Update the classes for the new academic year
1. Under Sync Profile, select the profile you cleaned up.
2. Hit Start New Term/Year. It won’t strip people out now we’ve correctly archived the relevant classes and users.
3. Set a new Profile Expiry Date using the calendar icon.
4. Tap Save.
5. Hit Upload.
6. Select Add Files.
7. Choose the new spreadsheets for the classes for the new academic year. If you’re a Cloud Design Box customer, we will do this for you after you’ve sent us your rollover form.
8. Tap Open.
9. Hit Upload.
10. Press Okay.
Updating your SDS for the new academic year is a breeze with these simple steps. First, archive off any old classes that won’t be needed anymore. Then, with the excitement of a fresh start, create new teams for the upcoming academic year. If you’re a Cloud Design Box customer, don’t worry – we’ve got your back and will handle this for you.
If you’re not a Cloud Design Box customer or would like us to take over your SDS academic rollover for you, or if you’d like to improve collaboration and communication with an intranet, contact us to find out how we can help.
