PowerSchool: PS12 Contacts Matching

To ensure SchoolMint does not create any duplicate contacts in the PowerSchool (PS) contacts schema, SchoolMint (SM) conducts an extensive series of checks to find matching contact records in PowerSchool before creating any new ones. 

The student matching process has been adapted for PS 12 to ensure the correct contacts are matched and shown in the comparison modal (step 5 of the Sync to SIS process). 

What is covered in this article?

• Matching Criteria
• Emergency Contacts
• District-wide Search

 Matching Criteria

To determine if contacts in SM already exist in PS, we look at the following fields in SM for a guardian:

• Contact FirstName (must match exactly)
• Contact LastName (must match exactly) 
• One contact method (either mobile phone or email address)*
• If no match is found using the above criteria, another attempt is made without the last name in case there is a typo in the last name
• If still no match is found, then this is considered a new contact

*Please note for mobile phone that the contact matching script will look at the SMmobilePhone and compare it with:

• PSmobilephone
• PSdaytimephone
• PShomephone

An example of the contact matching process:

	SchoolMint	PowerSchool
First Name	Maria	Maria
Last Name	Gonzales	Gonzalez
Mobile Phone	123-456-7898	234-567-8910
Daytime Phone		123-456-7898
Home Phone		628-320-7891
Email	[e-mail]	[e-mail]

In the above scenario, no match would be found at first. However, when trying a second time without using the last name, a match would be found. The exact process checks look like this:

FN & LN & ((SMmobilePhone vs PSmobilephone || SMmobilePhone vs PSdaytimephone || SMmobilePhone vs PShomephone) | Email (PRIMARY))

If match process fails then:

FN & ((SMmobilePhone vs PSmobilephone || SMmobilePhone vs PSdaytimephone|| SMmobilePhone vs PShomephone ) | Email (PRIMARY))

 Emergency Contacts

Emergency Contacts follow the same matching process used for guardians. Similarly, we look at FN, LN, and either the mobile phone or email address. If we find a match we will update the existing Emergency contact record rather than removing the original contact. 

District-wide Search

By default, SchoolMInt only searches for contacts within the existing student in PowerSchool. 

In the event of a brand new student being synced to PowerSchool, there is an option to enable a district-wide search within the PowerSchool instance for additional contacts that may already exist. Using this option causes the integration to take significantly more time, so please reach out to our Support team only if this is a needed option. 

By definition, district-wide means to search within the entire database of the PowerSchool instance. With existing students, we do the match process over the existing contact records of that student.

If a singular match is found, SchoolMint will pull the associated contact ID into SchoolMint, preventing the need to conduct the matching process again when the associated student is synced again. This contact ID will be visible as a non-editable field in the comparison window of the student found in Step 5 of the Sync to SIS process.

In the event of multiple matches found, SchoolMint will select the contact with the lowest sequence number (the first contact created by date/time stamp). 

If no matches are found after all of the above processes, SchoolMint will treat the contact as new and create a new contact record in the PS 12 contacts schema.