Opportunities for Support
BRIDGE Open Office Hours: North Dakota Department of Public Instruction (NDDPI) and project partners are now holding general Office Hours on a weekly basis. Our next session is scheduled for next Wednesday, June 10, 12–1 p.m. CDT.
Data Migration/Validation / Support Sessions: Project team members from NDDPI, Aurora Educational Technology (our data migration vendor), EduTech, and REAs will be available on a weekly basis to assist districts with specific data questions & support. Our next sessions are scheduled for next week:
Document Migration to Infinite Campus
Unstructured data (i.e. files/documents) are not stored in a single, consistent way across all districts. This directly impacts the ability for NDDPI to provide blanket, statewide, guidance that would apply to ALL ND school districts.
That said, NDDPI’s immediate focus is on identifying and extracting document files stored directly on PowerSchool servers. This is to ensure all relevant files can be retrieved (and migrated where possible) prior to PowerSchool decommissioning. NDDPI, Infinite Campus, Aurora, and North Dakota Information Technology (NDIT) are working together to develop and finalize this migration process. Details will be shared when available.
Districts with files and documents stored outside of PowerSchool servers will be responsible for the extraction and migration to Infinite Campus (if/where necessary). This may include third‑party solutions your district has adopted outside of your Student Information System (SIS) and/or PowerSchool plug-ins that store documents in a separate location, that you expect to have available in Infinite Campus.
Infinite Campus supports document storage and there are multiple ways to import documents into its document management area. Districts should work directly with their Infinite Campus Implementation team to discuss the options best for them and to help decide which documents actually need to be migrated. In addition, districts have the option to work with Infinite Campus’ channel partner, K12 Solutions, for file/document migration assistance. NDDPI is covering the costs for districts to leverage this type of additional support provided by K12 Solutions.
Lastly, districts should plan for the possibility that document storage and access in Infinite Campus may look different than in PowerSchool. Initially some documents may function more as archival/reference files than fully integrated system data.
State Standards & Historical Standards Scores (Standards-Based Grades)
During the data conversion process, all standards previously in PowerSchool are being extracted and made available for conversion. The extracted data includes a year identifier, which allows Infinite Campus conversion teams to determine which standards are imported for each district. Districts should work directly with their Infinite Campus conversion team to identify which standards (by year) should be loaded into their Infinite Campus instance.
Note: If your district does not use standard based grading, you may think you don’t need to upload the North Dakota State Content Standards to Infinite Campus. However, this functionality will be important for your special education staff when managing Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). Follow this link for guidance on how to import ND standards to your Infinite Campus standards bank.
While the standards themselves can be migrated or imported via the processes described above, historical student standards scores (aka standards-based grades) will follow a different process. Infinite Campus does not support storing standards grades in the same itemized way that PowerSchool does. *Therefore, Aurora, the project’s primary data migration partner, will be exporting a “scorecard” in excel format which will be uploaded to a student’s record in Infinite Campus. This is to ensure that districts maintain access to historical standards-based grades tied to individual students.
Behavior Data Conversion Update
Infinite Campus will convert the Data received from Aurora in the behavior history file layout. Districts will need to identify what is incorrect or missing, identify the correct location of the info within PowerSchool, and work with Aurora, or directly in the Data Migration Studio, to customize the script accordingly. Infinite Campus recommends that any additional fields are concatenated into either the “EventComments” or “ResolutionComment” field.
The standard extract will pull from behavior logs, and Infinite Campus will provide a behavior report showing what data will be converted under the standard model. Districts using modules outside of behavior logs but within PowerSchool will use the Aurora’s Data Migration Studio to fork their query.
Behavior third-party application integrations or conversions require a Technical Services Request that will need to be routed through the Infinite Campus Implementation Project Manager.
Further questions or requests should be directed to the bridge@nd.gov email address. Infinite Campus does not have the PowerSchool knowledge to assist districts with mapping activities.
Identity / Authentication Playbook
Earlier this week, NDDPI distributed an Identity and Authentication Playbook to district technical contacts. This playbook provides guidance for North Dakota Local Education Agencies (LEAs) on configuring identity and authentication to access state education systems. It outlines required and optional directory configurations, best practices, stakeholder access patterns, and future direction for a more unified Single Sign-On (SSO) experience.
Q & A
Q: If we adjust exit codes within PowerSchool, specifically for graduating seniors, will that data still flow into STARS as long as our transfer is still on and we have not passed the end date of the PowerSchool contract?
A: Yes, data will flow to STARS as long at the Automated File Transfer is turned on.
As a reminder, it is best practice to always make changes and updates in PowerSchool and let the data flow into STARS. It is also very important that data in STARS matches PowerSchool! STARS is what NDDPI uses for all reports and accountability rosters and is considered the source of truth for student status, dates, enrollment, accountability, fiscal processes, etc. Please do not assume that all student data will automatically update if changed in PowerSchool.
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