Unique Person Identifiers (IDs) and Contact Records

Manually Assign Unique Person Identifiers (IDs) 

The main steps to acquire a unique person ID for students and staff are very similar. The following describes the steps for students.

Note: Not all installations acquire unique person IDs. Some installation use manual entry or quick import.

1. Search for a student in PowerSchool. Check to see if a unique person ID has been assigned by accessing the Student Information page for the student in question and then locate the State Assigned ID field on the page.
   Note: If the student already has a unique person ID, you can still assign/update a new one if needed based on SEA and LEA policies and procedures.
2. Click Assign/Update Unique Person Id, or Get Unique ID. States may place the link in slightly different places on student pages in PowerSchool to fit their state’s business process workflow. The search criterion is based on your previous search selection.
3. If the search is successful, a list of candidates appears, sorted by the following criteria:
   • Match Level (descending). This puts the best match on top.
   • Last Name
   • First Name
   • Middle Name
   • Birth Date
   • Gender
4. Select the applicable student and click Next. The Student Information page appears with the new ID assigned.
5. If none of the students in the list are a match, click None of the above – Create new State Assigned ID, and then click Next. The Student Information page appears with the new ID assigned.
6. Click Cancel to return to the Student Information page without assigning an ID. A unique person ID can be assigned at a later time.
7. If Ed-Fi returned zero matches, a new unique person ID will be automatically created and assigned.

Automatic Creation of Student Contact Records

The Ed-Fi process automatically creates contact records for students that do not already have at least one contact record defined within PowerSchool. This functionality is invoked each time a school or district uses the Ed-Fi dashboard to publish student contacts.

If a student does not already have at least one student contact and relationship, the Ed-Fi process leverages the existing mother and father fields defined in the Students table, parses the fields to create separate contact records for each, and populates the PowerSchool student contacts table with the new records. If the mother and father fields cannot be successfully parsed, no contact record is created. Instead, the district/school must manually create the needed contact records.

Only first and last names are parsed. The relationship is assumed to be mother if data is derived from the mother column, or father when derived from the father column. Once the new student contact records are created, the district/school can then update any field on the contact record to adjust the relationship or name information, or to add other related data as appropriate.

The mother/father field parsing routine uses the following business logic:

• A valid name may contain alphabetic characters, a comma, apostrophes, and hyphens. Any other characters or punctuation will cause the field to be unusable (skipped).
• If a comma is found, everything before the comma is assumed to be the last name (and possible generation suffix). Everything after the comma is considered the first name.
• If a comma is not found, then the field is not parsed.
• If the mother and father fields both contain the same information, the father field is bypassed in order to prevent the creation of two identical contact records.

It is not an error if parsing fails on both the mother and father fields. This is only an indication that the software cannot automate the creation of contacts for a student, and the district/school must manually create the student contact record.