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      Get Started as Application Partners

      This article provides an overview of the steps required to become a School Passport Application Partner. 

      School Passport is an Integration Platform-as-a-Service (iPaaS) that enables seamless integration and collaboration between educational applications and Student Information Systems (SISs). As an Application Partner, you gain access to a variety of features, including roster data synchronization, Single Sign-On (SSO) functionality, and seamless integration with Learning Management Systems (LMSs). Join us as we explore how School Passport empowers you to streamline and enhance the educational experience for students and educators alike.

      Tip: As an Application Partner, you can complete the School Passport Sandbox Account Request Form and access the School Passport Sandbox environment. This will allow you to evaluate its core functionality and assess its capabilities firsthand.

      Benefits

      School Passport allows a secure transfer of student rosters to authorized parties and provides the ability to:

      • Make your application available to all customers.
      • Invite new customers for your application
      • Browse the list of customers and invite them to sync the data.
      • Collect roster data information (Students, Teachers, Enrollments, Classes, Courses, Calendars, Contacts and Admins).
      • Collect data from any Data Source (SIS, LMS, etc).
      • Include combinations of multiple Data Sources at the same time.
      • Clean, merge, and browse the data and detect potential duplicates/conflicts.
      • Request, authorize, and access data.
      • Monitor the sync statistics and audit all changes.
      • Define and detect data errors and filter out data by any criteria.
      • Access the data via API or SFTP.
      • Define your own CSV format for SFTP delivery.
      • Communicate with customers directly using the platform itself.

      Roster Data Sync

      Roster Data Sync ensures that your learning applications have the most current roster information by securely transferring the district's uploaded rosters.

      School Passport allows you to sync data using two different mechanisms:

      1. API-based data consumption: You can read data from School Passport using IMS OneRoster API v1.1, an open standard. This API is recommended and will receive long-term support from School Passport. For those Partners who don’t support IMS OneRoster API,  School Passport provides a temporary solution: API implementation of GG4L, which is compatible with School Passport Data API. This allows for quick adoption without requiring significant changes to your existing codebase (depending on the usage scenario).
      2. CSV files delivery via SFTP: School Passport can automatically generate CSV files and deliver them to the SFTP of your choice. You can either use your own SFTP or opt for a managed service.  The recommended and best-supported CSV format is IMS OneRoster v1.1. Additionally, School Passport can support your custom CSV format, specifically adapted to your application. Implementing your own CSV format may take 1-10 business days, depending on the complexity of the data structure. However, in the majority of cases (typical scenarios), this process can be completed within 3-5 business days.

      SSO and identity management

      The School Passport can behave as:

      • Stand-alone SSO Portal for Districts and Schools: Your application will be available to users as an icon in their SSO Portal.
      • Identity Provider for your application: Allows you to authenticate customers independent of the authentication mechanism that they use: Active Directory, AD FS, Google Workspace, Azure AD (Office 365), Login with LMS, Login with SIS, Kerberos, etc.
      • Embedded SSO engine for your application: Allows you to integrate SSO for one or more apps in your own application.

      LMS Integration

      School Passport supports the following LMS integration scenarios:

      • Publishing online courses in LMSs: With School Passport, you can publish links to your online courses from within the LMS. This enables users will be seamlessly redirected to the corresponding courses within your application.  We have extensive experience collaborating with prominent partners such as Coursera and Google for many years. 
      • Publishing applications in LMSs: School Passport simplifies the process of making your application available within LMS platforms. This is achieved by publishing an SSO link to your application directly within the LMS. As a result, users can simply click the link and be redirected to your application, without the need to log in to School Passport manually. To begin, establish an SSO between the School Passport (IdP) and your application (School Passport), and we will do the rest.
      • Syncing grades back to LMSs:
        School Passport allows syncing grades back to LTI-compliant LMSs (including Google Classroom) from different sources, such as Coursera and Google Qwiklabs.

      Next steps

      Visit Application Partner Onboarding to see how to start work with School Passport. 

      To learn more about SISs offered by School Passport, continue to the Supported SISes overview.