Overview

a Writeback is the process of moving information from SchoolEngage to PowerSchool.

Here are some common information written back to PowerSchool:

• Student Information

  • Legal & Preferred Name

  • Address

• Contact Information

  • Name

  • Relationship

  • Phone numbers and email

  • Address

Field Mappings

Writeback Process

Student Demographics

1. Edit – Updates the existing record

2. Add – Adds a new record

3. Ignore – Ignores the change and does not update in PowerSchool Yellow indicates a unique piece of data

• Data that will remain in PowerSchool after writeback is completed will highlight Green.

• Data that will be replaced in PowerSchool with the data in the New Value column will highlight Red

Contacts

Contacts are shared with other users, which allows data to keep up to date more easily. The downside to this approach, means that a mistake can affect another users data.

You can mitigate this risk by verifying who is doing an update to a contact to ensure a given change is accurate.

Contact Matching

Overview

During the writeback process, contacts are matched directly to existing contacts in PowerSchool.

Contact Ordering

Contacts will be ordered by a combination of your form and how it is mapped, and the data mapping on that form. New mappings can be created for specific contact combinations on the Contacts page.

Once contacts have pulled in they can be reordered using the outside arrow icons to drag them to the appropriate order.

Matching Criteria

Possible Matches

Contacts are match on the following criteria:

• first name

• last name

• email

• phone number

If a contact matches on any of these, it will return in the matched list of user. If for some reason a match you know exists isn’t appearing, it is possible the data doesn’t match, or that a update to your PowerSchool Plugin is required.

If SchoolEngage thinks that there is a possible match, that match must either be confirmed, or explicitly marked as not matching contact to reduce user errors.

Used By

An Existing Contact that has been linked to the student and is shared by other contacts will trigger this.

Clicking on Used By will expand and show a list of other users with their relationships

Icons

If the contact matched name does not match there will be a red person Icon indicating that. If the contact did not change their name, then this indicates a mismatch between the expected data and what is in SchoolEngage and that person will need to be matched manually.

If the phone types have a mismatch then a red phone icon will indicate it. Often times a writeback will fail if you do not resolve this.

Contact Options

Unlinking a contact from a student

You are only able to remove student links to contacts, not the contact
themselves. This will remove the link completely, not just expire it. The contact themselves will still be in PowerSchool
There are 3 main scenarios

1. Use when a contact should never have been linked to the student

2. Accidental linkage during a writeback for example

3. Contact never should have been linked to student

Expire A Contact

• Select when a parent is removing a contact
  Often indicated with red person icon

• Select an end date to expire the contact connection

• if the contact matches another contact, they will appear at the bottom as an unused contact.

Do Not Update Contact

This keeps the contact in PowerSchool without changing them.

Scenarios where you choose to not update a contact include:

• Contact is linked to an incorrect field on a form

• Contact may have been reordered or a new contact was added after the form was generated.

Reordering

• Contacts follow an order in PowerSchool.

• The best way to change that order is by using the multi arrow to drag the
  contact into the correct order.

• Do NOT select the contact name from the dropdown in an attempt to
  reorder, you will likely overwrite an existing contact that belongs to
  someone else.

Contact Data

Data Access Flag & Parent Portal Accounts

The Data Access Flag may be selected to give the parent Parent Portal access to the student. A valid email must be included and must not be in use by another parent portal account for the data here to populate as expected.

Updating a Field

Matches will connect to existing fields based on the order of values in the form. Information can be new, an update to the field, or a typo. The data will update whatever it is matched to

Adding a new field

Use when the both values are correct, mark field as Do Not Update, add the new value, and reorder as required.

Removing a record

Removing will delete a record, which will remove the value from the contact. This can be used when the information has changed and the data needs deleting.