SIF Messaging

SIF Messaging settings control how the Agent responds to queries and how often it checks PowerSchool for changes in data. The defaults are recommended for most installations, although you may wish to decrease the Event Reporting frequency to reduce network traffic and access to the PowerSchool database files.

Event Reporting

The Agent reports SIF events only if enabled to do so and only at selected intervals. Check the "Enable Event Reporting" box to enable the reporting of SIF events, and select the intervals at which you would prefer the Agent to report those events. By default, Event Reporting is enabled and occurs every 60 seconds.

Request & Response

This setting controls how the Agent responds to queries. If the Return as many objects as possible per packet radio button is selected, the PowerSchool Agent will fit as many objects into each response message as possible. The requesting Agent's maximum buffer size is used to calculate the size of response packets. For example, if a requesting Agent with a maximum buffer size of 100K bytes queries PowerSchool for all student records, the Agent will divide the responses into chunks of 100K, perhaps resulting in a few dozen messages, depending on the number of students in the school. This approach results in the optimal number of packets, thereby reducing network and processing overhead.

In some cases, particularly during diagnostics, it may be useful to have the Agent respond to queries with a single packet per object. To enable this mode, select the Return one object per packet (slower) radio button. For example, if a requesting Agent issued a query for all students, and 1200 students were enrolled in the school, the PowerSchool Agent would respond with 1200 individual packets, each consisting of one student object. This mode results in much slower overall processing by the requesting Agent because it must process many more messages.

Default:  The default is "Return as many objects as possible per packet".
When to Change: Change this setting to "Return one object per packet" only when it is easier to diagnose problems if query responses are packaged into individual response packets (e.g. one record in a response is resulting in an XML Validation error but you're not sure which one). Once you've isolated the problem, revert to the "Return as many objects as possible per packet" setting.

Advanced

By default, the Agent will "Request zone status from server upon connection" and "Use system control message to send request to server." Keeping these features enabled is recommended. If your Zone Integration Server does not support requests for Zone Status, or if the ACL for the Agent does not have permission to request zone status, uncheck these boxes to connect to the Zone Integration Server.