Is Your EdTech Ready for Back-to-School?

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3 Things for Edtech Vendors to Get Right with Rostering & Integrations

Back-to-school season comes fast, and if your team isn’t ready, it can lead to onboarding delays, flooded support tickets, and frustrated district partners.

The key? Getting ahead of rostering and integration needs now.

Here are the top 3 things to lock in before the school year rolls over.

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1. Plan for SIS Lockouts and Rollover Timing

Every summer, most SIS platforms go offline to prepare for the new school year. If you don’t plan ahead, your syncs could stop at the most inconvenient time. 

• Know the timing. Most SIS rollovers happen in late June and early July (just after the 4th holiday). That means limited access to SIS’s or complete lockouts, for a week or more.
• Review sync schedules. Make sure your system is ready to handle updates and changes. Remember, every district is on a different schedule, so be sure to know when a district’s data will change. If you’re using RosterStream, we will automatically pause data with our change detection and ask you for a review.
• Validate early. Rosters, student enrollments, and class schedules will completely roll over and change during this time. Test early and often to avoid surprises when the data changes hit your system.

Pro Tip: The first two weeks of July tend to be slower, use that time to prepare for the new rollover data that will be hitting your system at the end-of-month rush.

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2. Forecast Data Exchange Costs and Find Ways to Save

It’s easy to lose track of sync costs when your platform is growing and onboarding new districts. But with back-to-school surges just around the corner, data exchange rostering costs can add up quickly.

• Know your numbers. How many students, schools and districts will you onboard in August? Evaluate what type of internal resources you will need to support these numbers. Plan for direct connections to avoid exchange service costs like Clever.
• Review your suite of third-party platforms. Tools like Clever and other third-party sync platforms can be helpful, but have you looked at how much you are spending on each of these? This is a perfect time to evaluate what your team needs to be successful and what tools might be causing more of a bottleneck.
• Evaluate your costs. Have you reviewed the pricing structure of all of your tech? If most of your systems are on usage-based pricing models, then prepare for the back-to-school volume spikes which can increase your costs significantly. 

Want to reduce costs? Ask us about our Clever Cost Savings Analysis. We’ve helped other EdTech teams cut sync costs significantly.

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3. Coordinate Early with Districts on Integration Needs

By the time August comes around, district IT teams are buried. If you’ve waited or been forced to wait until then to sort out rostering, SSO or LMS setup, be sure to organize and prioritize your work load (With Platinum RosterCare, the Ednition team can help out with a District Assist™).

• Reach out now. Understand each district’s onboarding timeline, tech stacks, and upcoming changes.
• Anticipate late-stage requests. These can often include:
  
  • SSO System Changes
  • Switching of SIS or LMS Platforms
  • Change of Integration Connection Methods
• Get on the district IT team’s calendar. Schedule check-ins before the end of July, while districts still have time to collaborate and test. Especially if you support data augmentation or custom needs, reach out and stay on their radar!

Ready to Make Back-to-School Smooth (and Stress-Free)?

Let’s get ahead of rostering and integration roadblocks, before they pile up. Whether you're scaling your platform, onboarding new districts, or reevaluating your infrastructure, now is the time to prepare.

Ednition is here to help.

From direct SIS integrations and SSO to LMS connections and extended data domains, our core platform, RosterStream, is purpose-built to simplify the complex. And with RosterCare support and District Assist™, we’ll help you manage the busy season with fewer headaches and faster results.

Book a demo today and let Ednition support your EdTech team through every step of back-to-school and beyond.