Nearly everything displayed in School Loop is tied to the data we received from your Student Information System (SIS) and changes in that data are reflected after each new import. Given the transparency and near, real time display of data, there are a number of potential issues that can cause problems for School Loop users. Despite the number of potential issues, most schools experience no data integration related problems; some schools, however, experience occasional problems due to established data practices. The following table outlines problems associated with data integration that can crop up from time to time and the workaround solutions.
| Issue | Workaround |
| New teachers are assigned ID numbers previously used by another teacher. The previous teacher’s name appears in School Loop, causing confusion and making it difficult to register the new teacher. | Identify the proper account by teacher ID number, register the account using the new teacher’s email address, and then edit the account name. If the account had been previously registered, edit the account name, login name, email address, reset the password, and then pass this information along to the new teacher with the URL for the login page and instructions on how to change the password. |
| A student’s ID number is changed in the middle of the school year or a student is issued a different ID number after dropping from the school and re-enrolling later in the same school year. The student is dropped from all classes in School Loop and their original account is no longer active. | Teachers can use the Transfer Grade tool to transfer grades from the old student account to the new one. Have the student (and parents) register for a new School Loop account using the new student ID number |
| The course and/or section ID for a class is changed in the middle of a term. The course and all students are considered dropped in School Loop. Teacher gradebooks are disrupted and students won’t have access to online resources posted by the teacher. | Use the Manage Sections to move and merge the newly created courses into the appropriate Course Centers. Teachers may move the sections before any content (grades or assignments) has been entered in the new course. Once a teacher has entered content, it will be necessary for an administrator or School Loop to merge the courses for the teacher. |
| The school operates on semesters or trimesters, but classes are scheduled on a year long term. Student schedules are changed in the SIS in advance of the next term. These schedule changes are reflected immediately. Students are no longer enrolled in their courses for the remainder of the term. |
District Admins can block imports before making schedule changes in the SIS. Remember to allow imports again when scheduling is complete. Or, contact School Loop to request that imports be blocked and be sure to provide a date for when imports should be unblocked. |
| Mini courses are scheduled inside a term. For example: two six week long courses are scheduled inside of a 12 week long trimester. | If teachers have the same mini course more than once per term, they will have to maintain separate gradebooks. The start and end dates for the gradebooks must match the start and end dates for the mini courses. If the school is using our Grade Export System, a special marking period may be set up to accommodate a mini course that does not end on a regular marking period. |
| Current students are dropped and new students added to a course without a change in section ID. Changes are updated in the SIS a few days before the new class starts. Both old and new students are contained in the same gradebook for teachers. Dropped students are not available for the School Loop grade export feature. | District Admins can block imports before making schedule changes in the SIS. Remember to allow imports again when scheduling is complete. School Loop can also do this for you. Teachers will have to add a second gradebook for each course taught. The start and end dates for the gradebooks must match the start and end dates for the terms. |
| Course ID numbers are changed each term. A new course center is created when the course ID changes. Assignments, gradebooks, locker contents and more are not available to the teacher and his or her students. | If the teacher does not want online resources from the first term available to students in the second term, no action is necessary. Otherwise, use Manage Sections to move and merge the newly created courses into the appropriate Course Centers. |
| Course ID numbers are changed in the middle of a term. The results are the same as changing course ID between terms. Additionally, our Grade Export System may not function properly for the courses where the ID numbers have changed. | Use the Manage Sections to move and merge the newly created courses into the appropriate Course Centers. Teachers may move the sections before any content (grades or assignments) has been entered in the new course. Once a teacher has entered content, it will be necessary for an administrator or School Loop to move and merge the courses for the teacher. |
| Students are moved to new classes as part of a program (e.g. ELL courses based on improved language proficiency). Teacher gradebooks will be difficult to impossible to manage. | There is no known work around for this situation that allows the teacher to maintain an accurate online gradebook. |
| A composite teacher name has been created in the SIS for team taught courses. | The teachers in the team will either have to share a single account for the team taught class or the primary teacher can add the other teacher using our Gradebook Sharing feature (must be turned on at the district level). |
| Data imports from the school or district stop (typically due to some change on the SIS server). Changes such as dropped students and new enrollees are not reflected in teacher gradebooks. | Contact the person/department in your district responsible for the daily data imports. If necessary, contact School Loop support for help in diagnosing the source of the problem. |
| Teachers and students are not seeing new schedules on 1st day of new term. | Check the scheduled task that runs sloopy. It should be set to run between midnight and 6am. If sloopy runs before midnight, it will not pick up new schedules for the morning of the new term. |
Data Imports
In many cases, the problems caused by incorrect data in an import can be corrected in the SIS immediately and the fix will be reflected by the next school day. When necessary, schools or districts can initiate a new data import as soon as the cause of the problem has been corrected.
When an immediate correction and new import are not possible, School Loop has the ability to roll a school back to the last known error free import. Doing so will not cause a loss of work (e.g. grades, assignments, etc.). We also have the ability to block imports from a school for as long as it takes to identify and correct the cause of the problem.
