Hints and Tips

ED-FI SETUP PREREQUISITES

Verify the following items before creating your Ed-Fi profile:

Your server is running a supported version of PowerSchool
1. 19.4.5.3
2. 19.11.2.4
3. 20.4.5.2
4. 20.11.0.0 or higher
You have installed the latest version of the Indiana state reporting content
Attendance Setup – Link - Attendance Setup Document
Your District / School Setup is complete and accurate

SUB-DISTRICT SETUP

If your server contains schools that belong to multiple LEA’s, you must enable and configure PowerSchool sub-district functionality before creating your Ed-Fi profile:

Follow the setup instructions documented here: Sub-District Setup
Create one Sub-District record for every LEA on the server
Ensure that every school on your server is linked to a sub-district
Use the appropriate LEA ID to populate the District Number for each record
- If your LEA ID contains one or more alpha characters, replace each alpha character with a number that corresponds with the letter’s placement in the alphabet.
  - EX: A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, etc

ENABLE THE DATA EXCHANGE (DEX) PLUGIN

To access the Plugin Management Dashboard, sign-in to PowerSchool at the district level.

On the start page, choose System under Setup in the main menu. The System
Administrator page appears.
Under Server, click System Settings. The System Settings page appears.
Click Plugin Management Configuration. The Plugin Management Dashboard
appears.
In the Plugin Management Dashboard, select the Enable/Disable checkbox next to PowerSchool Data Exchange (DEX).

PROFILE CONFIGURATION

District Office > System > Data Exchange > General

Ensure that ‘System Enabled’ is set to ON
Logging options should start out at the Errors level, which is the default setting. Do not modify this setting unless advised to do so by a PowerSchool representative, as higher levels of logging will increase the load on your server.
After entering the URLs to connect to the state ODS, SAVE these values before continuing to the next step.
When configuring each LEA record, ensure that the following steps are completed:

- LEA Enabled is set to ON
- The Secret and Key values have been entered, tested, and saved
- The current school year has been enabled.
- Service Options: enable all values.
- Optionally, you may choose to leave Data Changes disabled until you have successfully published data for all schools. This setting ensures that critical changes to data are published automatically.
- The LEA Name and State Number are derived from values set up in PowerSchool under District Info.
- If sub-district functionality has been enabled, you will see one row for each LEA that you have configured. The State Number for each of these items is derived from District Number entered in the related Sub-District record.

DOWNLOADING STATE DESCRIPTORS

Currently, school corporations can only download data from Descriptors and Organization Directory resources in PowerSchool. The ability to download other resources will be added in a phased manner, and this page will be updated as each item becomes available.

When the process for downloading for a category has been initiated, the Downloading column status will change to ‘Yes’ to indicate that the download process has begun.
As the process continues, the number in the Downloaded column will increase. Once the download process has completed, the status displayed in the Downloading column will revert to ‘No’.

MAPPING LOCAL CODES TO STATE DESCRIPTORS

Once the state descriptor data has been successfully downloaded and your setup has been verified as noted in previous slides, you are ready to complete the Ed-Fi Code Sets Mapping process

All local values for the following Descriptors must be mapped:

• Attendance Event Categories

• Calendar Events

• Exit Withdraw Types

• Grading Periods Descriptors

Other descriptors displayed on this page will not be used for Data Exchange reporting in the 20-21 school year. New descriptors will be implemented in a phased approach, and these instructions will be updated as appropriate when each new resource becomes available.

PUBLISHING DATA

Publishing data is typically done at the school level. The school corporations (LEA) can publish data for all schools; however, the data is published to the state Ed-Fi ODS per school.

To prevent dependency errors, resources should be published in the following order, by category:

Student Demographics
- After initial publishing event, you must successfully send Calendars and Student Enrollments before attempting to publish this resource again!
Organization Calendars
Student Enrollments - establishes the student as being owned by your organization
Student Demographics (subsequent publishing)
Student Attendance Data

Note : DOE / Data Exchange is currently only configured to process data from the above resource categories. All other resource categories will be implemented in a phased approach, and instructions will be provided as each resource becomes functional.

BEST PRACTICES

When you first start publishing, the recommendation is that you start by publishing data for a single school.
- Once you have successfully published all required data successfully at this school, move on to the next school, and so on.

COMMON ISSUES ENCOUNTERED

1. Behavior: When accessing the Ed-Fi Dashboard or Resources page, the list of available options is missing 1 or more required items.

Things to check:

- Verify that the Ed-Fi Profile Type selected on the profile setup page is: EDFI_IN_2

2. Behavior: When attempting to publish any resource manually, the system seems to process briefly but nothing shows for any of the status columns.

Things to check:

System > System Settings > Plug-in Management Configuration > PowerSchool Data Exchange (DEX) > Profile Configuration
- Select the Profile
- Ensure that Enabled is set to ”ON”
- System > Data Exchange > General Setup > IN Ed-Fi profile > Profile Configuration
  - For each School Corporation (LEA):
  - Verify: Enable School Corporation is selected
  - Verify that the District Number contains the correct value
Verify that the correct value is entered for each School on the Schools - School Info page
Verify that Downloads have completed successfully for Descriptors or Organizational Directory
For attendance publishing issues:
- Ensure that at least one period in each bell schedule is set to count for ADA
- DO NOT SET THIS FLAG FOR PERIODS IN WHICH ATTENDANCE WILL NOT BE NOT TAKEN!