Contacts#

Contacts related to current students are synced from SIMS if you have any module enabled.

What Data is Imported?#

The following details from the contact are imported, they are imported as a user.

  • Person ID - Mapped to Third Party ID.

  • Forename - Mapped to forename.

  • Gender - Mapped to gender.

  • Home Address - A single address with the type “H” (meaning Home) is mapped to the address field.

  • Home Postcode - The postcode matching the address is mapped to the postcode field.

  • Home Telephone - A single telephone with the type “H” (meaning Home) is mapped to the telephone field.

  • Mobile Telephone - A single telephone with the type “M” (meaning Mobile) is mapped to the mobile number field.

  • Parental Responsibility - Mapped to the contact link.

  • Personal Email Address - A single email address with the type “H” (meaning Home) is mapped to the personal email address field.

  • Preferred Email Type - Mapped to the email type communication preference.

  • Preferred Telephone Type - Mapped to the telephone type communication preference.

  • Related Students - Mapped to a relationship.

  • Relationship to Student - Mapped to the contact link.

  • Surname - Mapped to surname.

  • Title - Mapped to title.

  • Work Email Address - A single email address with the type “W” (meaning Work) is mapped to the work email address field.

  • Work Telephone - A single telephone with the type “W” (meaning Work) is mapped to the work telephone field.

Important

When a contact ceases to be related to a current student at the school their account will be disabled the next time the sync tool runs. This will not clear any personal data (or any data) from the system but will disable their login so that they can no longer access the schools systems. That means it’s important that your SIMS configuration accurately represents your current student roster at all times. (If the contact is also a staff member, their account will be left active and the contact role removed)

Important

A users preferred contact methods are only imported once (when the account is first created) this is because the user can update their preferred contact method directly and therefore the one stored in SIMS would be incorrect. In an upcoming release we will update this preference in SIMS as well allowing both systems to remain in sync.

Tip

Gender is only mapped if a matching gender can be found. If a gender with a matching name isn’t found, the gender is not added to the user.

Tip

If a user has multiple home addresses in SIMS, the one with the most recent “Start Date” is mapped. Any other addresses are ignored.

Tip

If a user has multiple home, work or mobile telephone numbers in SIMS. A single one is selected using the following criteria:

  1. The telephone marked as “Primary”.

  2. The telephone marked as “Main”.

  3. The first telephone in the list.

Tip

If a user has multiple home or work email addresses in SIMS a single one is selected using the following criteria:

  1. The email address marked as “Primary”.

  2. The email address marked as “Main”.

  3. The first email address in the list.

Tip

A users email preference is determined using the following criteria:

  1. The type of the “Primary” email address if present

  2. The type of the “Main” email address if present.

  3. A default of “Personal” is assigned.

(Users can update this via their My Account section.

Tip

A users telephone preference is determined using the following criteria:

  1. The type of the “Primary” telephone if present

  2. The type of the “Main” telephone if present.

  3. A default of “None” is assigned (meaning the school staff will determine the number to call if contact is required). (Users can update this via their My Account section.

Tip

Title is only mapped if a matching title can be found. If a title with a matching name isn’t found, the title is not added to the user.

What Records Won’t be Imported?#

There are certain circumstances where a record won’t be imported. These are generally rare and are usually caused by some required data not being present on the record in SIMS.

The likely scenarios for a record failing are:

  • No Forename - Required in all cases.

  • No Email Address - Required in all cases. The user must have at least one email address (it should be marked as primary too).

  • No Surname - Required in all cases.

.. TIP:: We produce an output of the records that error so that you can see them and their errors. Allowing you to fix them and sync them successfully. These errors are also sent to us so that you can view them online.

Common Reasons for Failure#

Even when items pass the on site checks listed above there are still some reasons that they may fail to import into successfully. The common reasons that we have identified are listed below:

Username already in use#

When creating a new user, if the username is already in use the record won’t be imported because the email address is used as the user’s username. If an account already has that username assigned another one can’t be created.

Duplicate person records in SIMS can also cause this issue. This is best explained with an example scenario:

Let’s say you have 2 records that both represent the same person in real life “John Smith”.

Tip

This may happen because you’ve imported data via the CTF and it contained duplicate records for the same person or because the persons data has been entered more than once.

Tip

Sometimes we’ve seen this issue being caused where there used to be a duplicate account for a parent in SIMS. If one of the duplicated persons accounts is synced from SIMS and then account is later deleted from SIMS it won’t be removed but marked as inactive. This will leave the account with the username that is now in use on a different persons account in SIMS. If this occurs you’ll need to manually remove the issue by updating the username of the old account so that that username becomes available again for the new person from SIMS. If you come across this issue and you’re not confident in the resolution, please raise a support request and we will be happy to help.

Permissions#

The following SIMS permissions are required for the sync to complete successfully:

  • Contacts -> Basic Details -> View (All)

  • Contacts -> Record -> View (All)

  • Students -> Home/Family -> View (All)

  • Tools -> Set Up Lookups -> Run

The permissions required by other sync processes are also required. All permissions required for:

  • Student syncing