Integrations FAQ

Can a district use both Clever and ClassLink?

At the moment, no. But we are architecting this to support multiple data sources to manage or update like entities. Stay tuned for this!

What information is integrated?

At this time, GoGuardian pulls the following data: Teacher accounts, Classrooms, Students, and Guardians.

Is GoGuardian pushing data back to Clever or ClassLink?

No. The SIS will be the source of truth. 

How often are these syncs happening?

Syncs can happen one of two ways:

• (1) automatically overnight or
• (2) ad-hoc via a one-push button in Org Management. The automatic syncs are scheduled nightly and manual syncs can happen whenever an Admin pushes the button.

Is there an audit log for this stuff?

Yes. Org Management will have an Audit Log that describes the following:

• What time and day a sync occurred

• What type of sync. Whether it was an automatic job or a forced job and by whom (identifies the admin that forced the job)

• The status of a sync. Was it successful or did it fail for some reason

What happens if syncs aren’t working?

We’ll be reporting on two types of failures:

Sync Status Failure - This is the overarching status that identifies, “is this working?”

This is typically tied to an issue with our connection, either via provisioning or overall connection failure (API related or service related).

Entity Data Failure - This is tied to a specific data entity. For example, if an organization syncs and receives all teachers but only a few students, we can identify this as a data entity failure. Most of the time this is not something we can fix on GoGuardian’s end, and typically is tied to missing emails or other pieces of information. For these issues, we will need to direct users to their SIS or Clever/ClassLink.

• Although rare, errors may occur during syncs. One possible reason for this error is the size of the classroom. Please note classroom sizes are a maximum of 115 students. To successfully sync these classrooms, please divide these classrooms to smaller groups.

• GoGuardian leverages email addresses as key identifiers for users. GoGuardian requires valid email addresses for teachers and students in order for the system to sync properly. If an email is invalid or missing, GoGuardian will not sync that specific entity.

What happens to an accepted Clever/ClassLink classroom when a sync occurs?

When syncs occur, the classrooms will only update student rosters and teachers associated with the classroom. For example, if a classroom entity switches teachers, after a sync a new classroom will be created for the new teacher. The old teacher would most likely have to archive that classroom in the event that they are not associated with it anymore.

If an Org is using Clever, can they still create classrooms within GoGuardian natively or via Google Classroom sync?

Yes.

Can I prevent teachers from creating their own classrooms within GoGuardian?

Yes. If you are integrating with Clever, you have the option to set classrooms to "Clever Only," which will limit all classrooms to those synced into GoGuardian from Clever. For more information about this, please reach out to our Implementation Team at implementation@goguardian.com. 

Can a teacher edit the name of a classroom integrated from Clever?

No. Any changes to the classroom information will need to be made in the SIS.

Can any teacher of a classroom accept or decline the integrated classroom?

No. The primary teacher of the classroom must approve the import to have it appear in the dashboards of all other co-teachers.

What happens if a primary teacher in a classroom is removed from the classroom in the SIS?

If there is another primary teacher, the classroom will no longer be listed in the removed teacher's dashboard. The new primary teacher will then see the classroom when they login to their Teacher account. 

Please keep in mind that primary teachers cannot be removed from classes with only one primary teacher. 

What happens if a co-teacher is removed from the SIS?

This teacher is removed from the classroom after the sync. When this teacher logs into GoGuardian Teacher, the classroom will not show in their account until they are added back as a co-teacher within the SIS, or added manually by a current classroom owner to the Teachers list for the classroom within GoGuardian Teacher.

If a classroom is declined and therefore archived, can it be added back?

Yes. If a teacher navigates to the archived page and finds the classroom, they can add it back to active classrooms.

Can a teacher add or remove students/teachers from a GoGuardian Classroom?

No. All changes to the roster or teacher list should be made within Clever/Classlink. Any changes made in the SIS to teachers or students will reflect in GoGuardian after the next sync.

When starting a classroom session, however, teachers can exclude students from their session to temporarily hide their screen from the session view and prevent scene filters from applying. Students that are excluded can then be included again at any time!

What classroom settings are teachers able to edit?

Teachers will be able to make all edits to settings and scenes except adding/removing teachers, students or changing the name of the classroom.

Can I keep my old classroom sections for teachers and change the student rosters?

Yes. Any changes made to the rosters in Clever/Classlink will then update in GoGuardian after the sync.

Will the new sections I add for teachers replace the old sections, or will they show up as new classes? 

If you create new sections in Clever or Classlink, they will show up as new classes alongside the previous classrooms. In this case, we recommend having teachers archive old classrooms that are not in use.

Can I delete last year's classes? 

To remove the integration between a GoGuardian class and Clever/Classlink, you may either delete the section and all enrollments or delete the integration from Org Management. The classroom will then be archived and all past session data saved.

When a co-teacher is manually added in Clever synced classroom, will they be overwritten when a sync occurs?

No, it will not be overwritten. When teachers are manually added to a Clever synced classroom, they will remain when a sync occurs.

Can students use Clever badges to sign into a device rather than manually entering their credentials?

With the exception of Gateway deployments, students never need to sign into GoGuardian, This means the process of their authentication is outside the scope of GoGuardian as long as they are receiving the GoGuardian extensions.

If a school is integrated with Clever or Classlink and all the teachers have been synced and auto-enabled, can an admin upload a CSV that reverses the enablement for some of the teachers?

Yes, an admin can update the permissions of teachers via CSV if they want to keep them integrated but remove their teacher permissions. Or, they can de-integrate the users and that will also disable the teacher product for them.

If a sync fails, will teachers be able to do anything/will they know about it?

Currently, only Super Users or those with access to org management will be able to monitor the status of the integrations. If a sync fails, teachers will not be able to troubleshoot unless they have access to Org Management and/or the Clever/ClassLink admin portals.

If teachers are having issues with syncs, it is best that they reach out to their IT Admin team to identify the issue. GoGuardian is leveraging data in another source so most likely the issue is there.

Created - These are new data points that the integration created in GoGuardian. This accounts for data that did not previously exist in GoGuardian

Updated - These are data points that exist in GoGuardian and have information that is being altered, changed, or updated.

Unchanged - These are data points that were found in the sync that did not have any changes made to them.

Deintegrated - These are data points that are being untethered from the integration source. This usually accounts for data points that have been deleted or removed from a SIS. GoGuardian will not delete these data points but instead will de-integrate so that the data points are now managed by GoGuardian, not the integration partner.

Errored - These are data points that are not syncing for a specific reason. A good example of this can be a teacher or student account that is missing a key attribute field like an email address.