SIS Integration: Best Practices for Custom Form Fields and Mapping Templates

During the mapping process, there are many fields within SchoolMint that have more than a simple yes/no as their answer options. Below is a list of fields that are important to check and ensure they match with the answer options you have in your SIS.

STEP 1. Custom Form Fields to check to ensure consistency:

Check the following fields in SchoolMint to ensure that the format, layout, answer options, etc. match exactly what you have in your Student Information System (SIS).

Field in SM	Best Practice for Custom Form Field
Current grade vs. Grade applying to	There are standard field options in SM, so keep only those that are options in your SIS.
Student living with	This question is asked during account creation if the guardian selects that the student lives at a different address than theirs. Answer options in SM are any combination of the following: Mother Father Step-father Step-mother Sibling Aunt Uncle Brother Sister Cousin Grandparent Caretaker Foster parent Other If these answer options are different than what is listed in your SIS, please create another field in your custom application form that asks families to list who the student lives with, and ensure those responses exactly match what the possible responses are in your SIS
Guardian relationship to student	SM has standard field options; if they do not match your SIS, please create a custom field instead
Emergency contact relationship to student	SM has standard field options; if they do not match your SIS, please create a custom field instead
Emergency Contacts	Ensure that format in SM exactly matches what is in your SIS
Phone number	What should the format here be? In SM, the default if the field type is ‘phone_number’ will be 000-000-0000. Ensure this matches how you store phone numbers in your SIS
Doctor name and Doctor phone number	Does your SIS require that a phone number must be entered if a doctor name is provided? Check the conditional logic to ensure families enter all necessary information
Guardian Education Level	SM has standard field options; if they do not match your SIS, please create a custom field instead
Student Ethnicity	Check that answer options match your SIS (especially if they can select more than one)
Student birth state and country	Do the options in SM match the options in your SIS? Do you have codes for particular states/countries and will these align based upon answers in SM?
Health Conditions	Does the format in your SIS match what is being built out in your SM forms?
Language Survey	Ensure that language codes match what is in your SIS. If you use SM’s language field, what should languages not listed in your SIS (or that don’t have a code) be pushed as?
All fields	Let us know how the data is stored in your SIS, all caps or not, so that we can set this accordingly through the sync, to avoid duplicates
Address Fields	Does your SIS only have one field for Street1 and Street2? In the customizations section, you can ensure both fields in SchoolMint are sent to the same one field in your SIS by asking them to be concatenated (linked together).
Contact blocks	As much as possible, try to use our standard contact blocks for guardians, emergency contacts, etc. in your custom form.

STEP 2. Mapping Template Fields to check to ensure proper configuration:

Check the following fields in SchoolMint to ensure that the customizations needed are indicated in your mapping template so that the proper configuration can be setup.

Field in SM	Best Practice for Mapping Template
Current grade vs. Grade applying to	In the customizations tab, ensure that grade being pushed to is the correct code that matches with your SIS (ex. K = 0, 1st = 1, PK = -1, etc.)
Student living with	This question is asked during account creation if the guardian selects that the student lives at a different address than theirs. Answer options in SM are any combination of the following: Mother Father Step-father Step-mother Sibling Aunt Uncle Brother Sister Cousin Grandparent Caretaker Foster parent Other If you used a custom field, you are all set for the mapping template! If you used our standard field, please check to ensure that the necessary code transformations are being pushed that will match with your SIS. Ex. 'Mother' in your SIS is stored as 'MO'.
Guardian relationship to student	Please ensure the guardian relationship codes are listed in the customization section of your mapping template
Emergency contact relationship to student	Please ensure the emergency contact relationship codes are listed in the customization section of your mapping template
Emergency Contacts	Ensure that format in SM exactly matches what is in your SIS, and include any customizations as necessary.
Phone number	What should the format here be? In SM, the default if the field type is ‘phone_number’ will be 000-000-0000. Ensure this matches how you store phone numbers in your SIS
Doctor name and Doctor phone number	Does your SIS require that a phone number must be entered if a doctor name is provided? Check the conditional logic to ensure families enter all necessary information
Guardian Education Level	SM has standard field options; if they do not match your SIS, please create a custom field instead
Student Ethnicity	Check that answer options match your SIS (especially if they can select more than one)
Student birth state and country	Do the options in SM match the options in your SIS? Do you have codes for particular states/countries and will these align based upon answers in SM?
Health Conditions	Does the format in your SIS match what is being built out in your SM forms?
Language Survey	Ensure that language codes match what is in your SIS. If you use SM’s language field, what should languages not listed in your SIS (or that don’t have a code) be pushed as?
All fields	Let us know how the data is stored in your SIS, all caps or not, so that we can set this accordingly through the sync, to avoid duplicates
Address Fields	Does your SIS only have one field for Street1 and Street2? In the customizations section, you can ensure both fields in SchoolMint are sent to the same one field in your SIS by asking them to be concatenated (linked together).
Contact blocks	If your SIS stores names with `last name, first name`, please include this in the customization section and ask that the name fields are concatenated in the desired format.

TO NOTE FOR POWERSCHOOL MAPPINGS:

SchoolMint cannot update the entry_date, exit_date, immunization dates, grade, school, fteid, or enroll status for any existing students in PowerSchool (be it any state). This is a restriction from the PowerSchool API. This is where `Notes` come in handy so that as an administrator, you can take follow up action.