Blackbaud Integration Guide
School Signals can securely import student, parent, and teacher information from Blackbaud.
Setup consists of four simple steps:
Verify that you have permission to connect Marketplace applications in Blackbaud.
Connect the School Signals application in Blackbaud.
Authorize School Signals to access your Blackbaud environment.
Contact School Signals to perform the initial data import.
Depending on your school's policies, Steps 2 and 3 may be completed by different Blackbaud users. One user may connect the School Signals application in Blackbaud, while another user authorizes School Signals to access your organization's data.
Before You Begin
To complete this setup, you will need:
A Blackbaud account with permission to connect Marketplace applications.
A School Signals Account Manager login.
The School Signals Application ID (provided below).
Note: School Signals can only access the same data that the authorizing Blackbaud user is permitted to access.
Step 1. Verify That You Can Connect Marketplace Applications in Blackbaud
Before connecting the School Signals application, confirm that the Blackbaud user performing this step has permission to connect Marketplace applications.
The user completing this step must have Marketplace permissions that allow applications to be connected and disconnected.
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If you're unsure whether your account has these permissions and how to navigate Blackbaud, please check an excellent 3-minute overview video by Blackbaud:
Blackbaud Help Video
Additional Blackbaud documentation to review:
Permissions to Connect Applications
Connect an Application
Step 2. Connect the School Signals Application in Blackbaud
Within Blackbaud Marketplace:
Open My Applications.
Select Connect App.
Enter the School Signals Application ID provided below.
School Signals Application ID
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Complete the connection within Blackbaud before proceeding to the next step.
Step 3. Authorize School Signals
The Blackbaud user completing this step determines which data School Signals is permitted to access. This may be the same person who connected the application in Step 2, or it may be a different user. Blackbaud recommends that the authorizing user have the following roles:
SKY API Data Sync
Academic Group Manager
School Signals can only access the same data that this authorizing Blackbaud user is permitted to access.
How to authorize School Signals:
Log in to School Signals using your Account Manager account.
Open your organization's Dashboard.
Click the Authorize Integration button.
You will be redirected to Blackbaud.
Sign in (if prompted).
Review the permissions that School Signals is requesting.
Click Authorize.
You will automatically return to School Signals.
If the authorization is successful, your School Signals dashboard will display a Connected status along with the name of your Blackbaud environment.
Example:
Step 4. Initial Data Import
Once authorization has been completed, please let us know, and we will perform your initial import.
School Signals can import:
Students
Parents and guardians (through student relationships)
Teachers (Blackbaud users with the Teacher role)
Optional imports include:
Teacher grade-level assignments based on course schedules
Student homeroom (primary) teacher assignments based on course schedules
During your first import, we will verify that the data has imported correctly before your school begins using School Signals.
After the Import
Once the initial import has been completed, you may continue setting up your school within School Signals.
You are free to update student, parent, and teacher information directly in School Signals as needed.
School Signals has read-only access to Blackbaud. Changes made in School Signals (such as updating an email address) are not written back to Blackbaud.
If you need to refresh data from Blackbaud in the future, School Signals can perform additional synchronization imports upon request.