Account Linking Using Simple File Format (SFF)

a.    Log in to ThinkCentral as a district administrator.

b.    In the top menu bar, click the User Accounts tab, move to the Manage area, and then click Find and Manage.

c.    In the Export area, select the check box beside All to include both students and teachers in the file, and then click the Export button.

d.    Follow your browser's prompts to open or save the comma separated value (CSV) export file.

or

If the number of records to export is too large to download immediately, click the Email My Report button in the dialog box that appears. The file is sent within 24 hours to the email address set up on your ThinkCentral account. Below is an example of the export file.

e.    Save the file.

For Holt McDougal Online, teacher and student data must be exported separately.

Teacher

a.    Log in to Holt McDougal Online as a district administrator.

b.    Click Teachers and select Manage User Accounts.

c.    Click Submit. A list of users appears.

d.    Click the Select All, and then click Export to CSV.

e.    Click the icon at the bottom right of the screen to open the file. Below is an example of the export file.

f.      Save the file.

Student

a.    Log in to Holt McDougal Online as a district administrator.

b.    Click Students and select Manage User Accounts.

c.    From the Grade list, select one grade at a time, and then click Submit. A list of users appears.

d.    Click Select All, and then click Export to CSV.

e.    Click the icon at the bottom right of the screen to open the file. Below is an example of the export file.

f.      Repeat for every grade level, and then combine the files into a single student file.

g.    Save the file.

a.    In Import Management, click the VIEW MDR INFO tab. A list of all the schools in your district appears.

b.    Click the download icon to save the list of the schools and their corresponding PIDs as a CSV file.

c.    Follow your browser's prompts to save the file.

d.    Locate the CSV file on your computer and open it. Below is an example of the MDR PID file.

e.    Save the file.

The following four data files must be imported to a staging database that has access to the SIS data:

–      ThinkCentral student and teacher file

–      Holt McDougal Online teacher file

–      Holt McDougal Online student file (assuming you combined all results into one file)

–      MDR PID file (for existing users, you may already have this information)

Districts often update LASIDs based on the following:

–      for staff—email links

–      for students—a combination of first name, last name, grade level, and org location (Variations of names should be considered; for example, Jim and Jimmy are not the same.)

The exports from TC and HMO store only the MDR PIDs, so it is important that you link to this file when trying to determine org location.

Warning: Complete user matching before the end of the school year. The matching of users to correct schools is important; if you wait until fall, many students may move to new school locations making your ability to correctly populate the LASIDs more challenging and time consuming.

If a student or teacher is tied to more than one account at a single school because a separate user account was created for every subject the user attends or teaches, then you must decide which account best represents the data you wish to retain. This is necessary because a user can only be linked to one account, per organization, per platform. If you link to all of them, then you will see duplicate users in all your current year classes because all the user accounts share the same LASID.

➔      Check your TC and HMO files for the following:

–      Do you have any users who are listed in the same school more than one time? If yes, you must decide which account you want linked.

Example:  

Select lasid, [School PID] from #TC group by lasid, [School PID] having count (1) > 1

Where #TC is your RAW TC csv file. You can create a pivot table on the csv data to identify for duplicate accounts.

–      Do you have any users across schools who are sharing the same username? Remember, usernames must be unique in TC/HMO per org, but usernames can share the same LASID as long as its across schools.

Example:  

Select lasid, username, [School PID]from #TC group by lasid, username, [School PID]having count (1) > 1

 

Load the primary org location for any user accounts that were not loaded in steps 1–6.

For users accounts tied to more than one organization or users with more than one username, load the additional user accounts in VERTICAL file format. (See VERTICAL File Format for details.)

a.    Load existing TC teachers and students.

b.    Load existing HMO teachers and students.

c.    Load any new students (from SIS).

For a user who is uses both TC and HMO for the same school, use the VERTICAL file format creating one row for each unique username—one row for ThinkCentral, one row for Holt McDougal Online, and one row for Ed, if applicable.

The following is an example of the VERTICAL file format for a usernamed John Doe who uses both TC and HMO but has a different username for each.

LASID	FIRSTNAME	LASTNAME	ORGANIZATIONID (MDR PID)	USERNAME	HMHAPPLICATION
12345678	John	Doe	12345678	JDOE	TC
12345678	John	Doe	12345678	JDOE@mydistrict.com	HMO.ED

Note: The USERNAME and LASID form a composite key. Any platforms that share that username must be on one line.