Import your data

Admin › Account › Import Data is where you bring your records into schoolOS: your schools and buildings and their rooms, your staff and students, your devices, the tickets from the helpdesk you used before, and the help articles and documents schoolAgent and Otto answer from. Each kind has its own tab, and each tab shows how many you already have, so you can see at a glance what's in and what isn't.

The tabs#

| Tab | What it brings in | Needs | | --- | --- | --- | | Locations & Rooms | Schools, offices and other buildings, and the rooms in them, from one CSV. Pick one building for a file of its rooms. A location or room you already have is updated, not duplicated. See Import locations. | Add locations (locations.create) to add locations; Edit locations (locations.update) to change them or add rooms | | People | Staff and students, from a CSV, a nightly SFTP file or your SIS. See Import people. | Add people (users.create) | | Assets | Devices and other equipment, from a CSV, or from your device management system once it's connected. See Import assets and Connect a device management system. | schoolAssets and Add assets (assets.create) | | Tickets | Ticket history, from a CSV or straight from Freshservice, Freshdesk, Zendesk or HappyFox. See Import ticket history. | schoolHelpdesk and Manage helpdesk settings (tickets_admin.manage) | | Knowledge | Help articles and documents for schoolAgent and Otto, from Google Drive, OneDrive, Confluence, Zendesk, Freshworks, HappyFox, your website or a file. See Knowledge. | schoolAgent and Manage knowledge (knowledge.update) |

Each tab's label shows how many you have once there are any, for example Assets · 1,240. The count covers what you can see, by the same rule as the list: people at your locations or on your teams, and assets and tickets by your role's reach for each (for example, the locations your teams cover). On the Assets tab, the line under the tabs also says how many of those came from device management, for example 1,240 assets in schoolOS, 980 from device management. On Locations & Rooms it counts both, for example 9 locations and 14 rooms in schoolOS. View all under the tabs opens the list itself.

A tab your plan doesn't include isn't shown. A tab your role can't import is shown grayed out; ask an admin who can. The tab you're on is in the page's address (?tab=assets), so you can bookmark it or send it to someone. An old link to the Rooms tab opens Locations & Rooms.

Under each of the Locations & Rooms, People and Assets imports, Recent imports lists the last few: when, who, which file, and how many rows came in or failed. On the Assets tab it lists device management syncs too, by time with the files: the system and, for PDQ Connect, the organization (PDQ Connect · Lincoln East), whether it was the Scheduled sync or Sync now, and how many devices it matched, created and sent to review. The Tickets tab lists every ticket import with its progress, and the Knowledge tab shows each source's last sync on the source itself.

What to import first#

Import in this order, because each step matches names from the one before:

1. Locations & Rooms. People and assets name the school, and the room, they belong to.
2. People. Assets name who they're assigned to, and tickets name who asked and who worked them.
3. Assets and Tickets, in either order.
4. Knowledge whenever you're ready: it doesn't depend on the others.

For example, a district with 12 schools imports its 12 locations first, then its roster, so every student arrives at the right school and every Chromebook in the asset file finds its student.

Which should I choose?#

Most tabs start from a spreadsheet saved as CSV. For people, assets and tickets there's a second way in: a connection that reads straight from the other system.

| Way in | What it does | Choose it when | | --- | --- | --- | | CSV file | You export a spreadsheet, match its columns to schoolOS's fields, check the rows and import them. What a second run of the same file does differs by tab; each tab's article says. | You're moving once from a system schoolOS can't connect to, or you want to clean the data up in a spreadsheet first. | | Roster sync (People) | schoolOS reads your SIS over OneRoster, or a file dropped on SFTP every night, and keeps people up to date. | Your roster changes during the year and you don't want to import it by hand again. | | Device management (Assets) | schoolOS reads your devices from Google Devices, Jamf Pro, Microsoft Intune, Mosyle or PDQ Connect and syncs them again on its own, matching each to an asset you already have before adding anything. | Your devices are enrolled in one of those. Import a purchase spreadsheet first if it has details your MDM doesn't, like cost or funding source, then connect. | | Knowledge source (Knowledge) | schoolOS reads your help center, drive, wiki or website, once or on a schedule you choose. See Knowledge. | schoolAgent should answer from what your district already wrote. | | Helpdesk connection (Tickets) | schoolOS reads your old helpdesk's tickets, replies and notes over its API, in the background, and can be run again to pick up what changed. | Your history is in Freshservice, Freshdesk, Zendesk or HappyFox. It brings more than a CSV export does (replies, notes, who worked each ticket) with less work. |

Connect a device management system#

The Assets tab starts with Connect a device management system, which shows a card for each system schoolOS connects to: Google Devices, Jamf Pro, Microsoft Intune, Mosyle and PDQ Connect. Each card says whether it's connected for your account.

• Connected cards show when it last synced, how many assets came from it and, if the last sync had a problem, how it went. Sync now runs a sync right away in the background; you can leave the page. Settings opens its setup page on Admin › Account › Integrations.
• N waiting for review shows when new devices from that system are waiting in its review queue, and opens the queue on its setup page.
• Not connected cards offer Connect, which opens the same setup page Admin › Integrations uses. See Device management (MDM) for what each one asks for.

PDQ Connect with more than one PDQ organization shows a line for each: its name, when it last synced, how it went, and how many assets came from it. Sync now syncs every organization; one already syncing is left to finish while the others start. Preview shows what the next sync would do before anything is created: how many devices match an asset you have, how many it would create (with their type, school and any new manufacturers and models), how many go to review and how many it skips, and why. See Preview the import, and New devices from PDQ for sending new devices to the right school by their PDQ group.

Connecting, syncing or changing one needs Manage integrations (integrations.view), because its sign-in is an integration secret. Without it you see the cards read only, with the names of people in your account who can connect one.

For example, a district that tracks its Chromebooks in Google Admin imports its purchase spreadsheet here first, then selects Connect on Google Devices. After the first sync the card reads Connected with the number of Chromebooks it brought in, and the Assets count above it says how many came from device management.

Knowledge#

The Knowledge tab brings help articles and documents into the knowledge base schoolAgent and Otto answer from. It shows when your account has schoolAgent, to people with Manage knowledge (knowledge.update). Its count is your knowledge sources, the same number the Knowledge tab of Admin › Agent › Configuration shows: each document once, and each website once. View all opens that tab, and needs Manage the agent (intelligence.view).

Where are your help articles now? has a card for each source: Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Confluence, Zendesk, Freshworks, HappyFox, Website and Files. A check on a card means it's connected (on Website, that you read at least one website). Select a card to open it under the cards:

• Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Confluence, Zendesk, Freshservice, Freshdesk and HappyFox open their own setup page from Admin › Account › Integrations, here on the tab: connect it, choose what to bring in, set How often, and select Sync now. It's the same connection the Knowledge tab and Admin › Account › Integrations use, so connecting it here connects it everywhere, and you never have two. See each source's article for what it asks for: Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Confluence, Zendesk, Freshservice, Freshdesk and HappyFox. Signing in to Google or Microsoft brings you back to this tab.
• Website lists each website you read, with how its last sync went, when it last synced, how many pages synced, Sync now and How often. Add a website opens the same wizard as the Knowledge tab: enter the address, choose the pages and who can see answers from them, and pick How often. A new website starts at Keep in sync: monthly. Sync now reads every chosen page again from scratch, at most once a day.
• Files sends you to the Knowledge tab of Admin › Agent › Configuration to upload a PDF, Word document, spreadsheet or text file. A file always comes in once: schoolOS can't see the copy on your computer, so upload it again when it changes.

Connecting a source, choosing what comes in from it and changing its How often need Manage integrations (integrations.view) too, because its sign-in is an integration secret. Without it, the source says so; ask an admin who has it. Websites and files need only Manage knowledge.

Once, or keep in sync?#

Every knowledge source has the same How often, with the same choices, wherever you set it: here, on its page under Admin › Account › Integrations, and on the Knowledge tab. It's one setting, so changing it in one place changes it everywhere. It saves as soon as you pick it.

| Option | What it does | Choose it when | | --- | --- | --- | | Once — I'll sync again when I want | A one-time import. What you chose comes in when you select Sync now (or add it), and nothing runs on its own after that. | You're moving off an old system and want one copy of its articles, the documents are final, or you want to decide exactly when the agent's answers change, like the day a new handbook is approved. | | Keep in sync: hourly | Checks for changes every hour. | People edit it through the day, like an IT status page during a rollout or a snow-day plan. | | Keep in sync: daily | Checks every day. | Procedures and FAQs your teams edit now and then. A good choice for an IT or Facilities knowledge base. | | Keep in sync: weekly | Checks every week. | Handbooks and policies that change a few times a year. | | Keep in sync: monthly | Checks every month. | Reference material reviewed once a year, or a large website. |

Keeping in sync is cheap: each check reads only what changed, and skips everything else. A sync happens within a quarter of an hour of being due, and a source that has never synced is due right away. A website is read again from scratch at most once a day, so on a website Keep in sync: hourly checks it daily.

Where a new source starts: Google Drive, OneDrive, Confluence, HappyFox, Zendesk and Freshworks at Keep in sync: weekly, and a website at Keep in sync: monthly. Change it any time.

For example, a district moving from Freshworks to schoolOS connects Freshworks on this tab, ticks every section and sets Once — I'll sync again when I want, so its 300 articles come in once and nothing reaches back to Freshworks after it's switched off. Its IT team keeps its how-tos in Confluence, so it connects Confluence too and leaves it at Keep in sync: daily: a page a tech fixes on Monday reaches schoolAgent by Tuesday morning.