The Microsoft School Data Sync (SDS) rollover process 2021 has changed slightly since last year, so we have created a video guide to walk you through the process.
If your profile has expired and you’re ready to start the academic year, then this guide is for you.
One thing you’ll notice is that there is no longer a cleanup option button. Previously, this button would achieve all of your Class Teams; however, in an effort to give you more choice, Microsoft has removed this button and – if we’re honest – it’s made it more of a tricky process.
Below are some simple steps we can do – and remember, we only have to do this once every academic year.
Important: Do not start the new term or year until you have completed the cleanup process. Otherwise, all of your users will get stripped out of those old Class Teams and won’t be able to access their archived Class Teams.
- Go to the Groups to bring up the Groups page.
- Click the Sections tab and select Section Report.
- Select Generate new section report. This report provides information on class names, metadata associated with the class, state of the class team, created date and SharePoint site status.
- Download the Section report once it has been processed.
Tip: If you format the spreadsheet into a table and create headers, you can then sort the information by Name or Section.
- Find the correct SectionId for the Teams you want to clean up. Naming Teams correctly with the correct prefix and academic year will save you time here.
- Remove the Teams from the spreadsheet you don’t want to clean up, and you should be left with the teams from the correct school and academic year. Save the spreadsheet.
- Return to Section Cleanup and upload the edited Section Report.
- You can Mark the Classes as Expired or Archive Teams (we’d recommend the latter as all the Teams are available in read-only mode).
- Select Run cleanup.
- Check that your classes have been archived off. It should have cleared them from the SDS Profile.
Now it’s time to start the new term/year.
- Select Start new term/year.
- If you’re using CSV files, you need to upload your new CSV files. If you’re using an API or OneRoster, you need to make sure your new data is ready to sync.
- Set a profile expiry date and configure the other options on the page.
- When you’re ready, select Sync, and it’s now ready for the new academic year.
We have a guide on how teachers can find those archived Teams, how to move over your old Class Notebooks and make sure you don’t lose long-term resources.
If you’re a Cloud Design Box customer, we do all of this for you. Just make sure you complete the Roll Over form in plenty of time.
You also benefit from an easy-to-use class dashboard where you can access all of your archive Class Teams.
If you would like to learn more about how we can help your school or trust, please contact a member of our team today.
Hi,
Really interesting and informative article.
One question I have is that the school I’m working with want to come off SDS, Is it easy to go about removing SDS from being used?
Hi Glyn,
SDS is the best practice for creating Teams. If teams are created manually or through PowerShell, you will miss out on parental digest emails (and very exciting new parent features coming soon to Teams), you will miss out on populated whole school insight data and integration with a wide range of products. I would probably talk to the school about why they want to remove it and you might find that there is a particular problem that can be resolved. We are always here if you want to talk about automating it (if that is becoming an issue). If they are moving to something like Google classroom, you would just go through the end of year process to archive all the class teams.
Hope that is helpful!