Summer Recap 2019: APIs
Published
We’re continuing on with our Summer Recap, looking at everything you may have missed in an easy to digest blog post product by product. In case you missed our EMS recap, you can catch up here.
Today we’re taking a look at the API.
Blackbaud Education Management (like many other Blackbaud solutions) can be expanded and customized to fit your school’s specific needs. One way to do this is through application programming interface (API) endpoints. Developers, schools, and third-party partners use APIs to enable other programs to talk to our solution and for our solution to talk to others safety and securely.
(School) SKY API
As many of you know, the current Education Management solution is based in large part on the former “ON” products (Whipple Hill) but is moving towards a SKY experience that makes all Blackbaud solutions (including Raiser’s Edge NXT and Financial Edge NXT) look and function with a cohesive SKY vision.
Therefore, we currently maintain a legacy “ON” API and software development kit (SDK), while we also work to create a SKY API for Schools.
One major goal for us, is to ensure that all API endpoints previously available in the legacy “ON” API are available in the new SKY API for schools. We want the new SKY API to have full parity to the legacy one, so that anything you (or a partner) created with the older “ON” API can also be handled by SKY API.
This summer we’ve made significantly more process on this goal.
From the end of May to August 21, 2019 we added over 20 endpoints to (School) SKY API, which were only previously available in (Legacy) "ON" API. For details, see the (School) SKY API changelog.
(Legacy) “ON” API & SDK
We’re no longer expanding “ON” API. However, we continue to support both the “ON” API and the “ON” SDK. We haven't yet determined a specific date for when these legacy “ON” offerings will reach end of life/sunset. We don’t currently have any plans to eliminate the ODBC SQL View access (via VPN connection) that’s included in “ON” SDK. The ODBC SQL View access remains valuable to many schools because they use Crystal Reports or Microsoft Excel to read the data that they access through ODBC.
The legacy “ON” SDK functions like Advanced lists in the sense that our development team must update the ODBC any time we add new columns/data to the database before it appears in the view. Although the current view doesn’t include 100% coverage, it’s very comprehensive. However, like Advanced lists, users must understand the underlying database structure to build queries. It isn’t an intuitive process for users who are unfamiliar with SQL.
Reporting
We continue our efforts to make reporting more intuitive for users of all backgrounds. These efforts include updates to “SKY” style Lists that appear throughout Blackbaud Education Management, Transcript and Report card builders (which reduce the need for some custom Crystal Reports), customizable SKY Reporting insights and dashboards, and more.
OneRoster
We’ve also been working on API endpoints specifically for OneRoster. OneRoster enables schools to securely and reliably exchange roster information, course materials, and grades between systems. OneRoster supports the latest real-time web services mode known as REST.
Blackbaud Education Management is now certified with REST API endpoints for OneRoster v1.1 Integrations. However, we do not support a comma separated value (.csv) import or export method.
Our early adopter program (EAP) for schools who previously expressed interest in using this to integrate with Canvas (a third party learning management system or LMS) is currently underway.
OneRoster is governed by the IMS Global Learning Consortium, who also manage Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) and other standards for integrated education environments. In OneRoster terms, Blackbaud Student Information System is the "provider" and we support the "consumer driven events" (through a "pull model").
Learn more
If you’re craving technical knowledge to round out your summer reading list, check these out:
Join us again next week as we take a look at the next product and what they accomplished over the summer months while you were out. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you back here on Tuesday!
Today we’re taking a look at the API.
Blackbaud Education Management (like many other Blackbaud solutions) can be expanded and customized to fit your school’s specific needs. One way to do this is through application programming interface (API) endpoints. Developers, schools, and third-party partners use APIs to enable other programs to talk to our solution and for our solution to talk to others safety and securely.
(School) SKY API
As many of you know, the current Education Management solution is based in large part on the former “ON” products (Whipple Hill) but is moving towards a SKY experience that makes all Blackbaud solutions (including Raiser’s Edge NXT and Financial Edge NXT) look and function with a cohesive SKY vision.
Therefore, we currently maintain a legacy “ON” API and software development kit (SDK), while we also work to create a SKY API for Schools.
One major goal for us, is to ensure that all API endpoints previously available in the legacy “ON” API are available in the new SKY API for schools. We want the new SKY API to have full parity to the legacy one, so that anything you (or a partner) created with the older “ON” API can also be handled by SKY API.
This summer we’ve made significantly more process on this goal.
From the end of May to August 21, 2019 we added over 20 endpoints to (School) SKY API, which were only previously available in (Legacy) "ON" API. For details, see the (School) SKY API changelog.
| TIP: We now recommend that any new development use SKY API, instead of “ON” API. Although we have a few more endpoints to add before we reach parity, we no longer recommend “ON” API for new development. |
(Legacy) “ON” API & SDK
We’re no longer expanding “ON” API. However, we continue to support both the “ON” API and the “ON” SDK. We haven't yet determined a specific date for when these legacy “ON” offerings will reach end of life/sunset. We don’t currently have any plans to eliminate the ODBC SQL View access (via VPN connection) that’s included in “ON” SDK. The ODBC SQL View access remains valuable to many schools because they use Crystal Reports or Microsoft Excel to read the data that they access through ODBC.
The legacy “ON” SDK functions like Advanced lists in the sense that our development team must update the ODBC any time we add new columns/data to the database before it appears in the view. Although the current view doesn’t include 100% coverage, it’s very comprehensive. However, like Advanced lists, users must understand the underlying database structure to build queries. It isn’t an intuitive process for users who are unfamiliar with SQL.
Reporting
We continue our efforts to make reporting more intuitive for users of all backgrounds. These efforts include updates to “SKY” style Lists that appear throughout Blackbaud Education Management, Transcript and Report card builders (which reduce the need for some custom Crystal Reports), customizable SKY Reporting insights and dashboards, and more.
OneRoster
We’ve also been working on API endpoints specifically for OneRoster. OneRoster enables schools to securely and reliably exchange roster information, course materials, and grades between systems. OneRoster supports the latest real-time web services mode known as REST.
Blackbaud Education Management is now certified with REST API endpoints for OneRoster v1.1 Integrations. However, we do not support a comma separated value (.csv) import or export method.
Our early adopter program (EAP) for schools who previously expressed interest in using this to integrate with Canvas (a third party learning management system or LMS) is currently underway.
OneRoster is governed by the IMS Global Learning Consortium, who also manage Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) and other standards for integrated education environments. In OneRoster terms, Blackbaud Student Information System is the "provider" and we support the "consumer driven events" (through a "pull model").
Learn more
If you’re craving technical knowledge to round out your summer reading list, check these out:
- (School) SKY API changelog - details about new endpoints
- SKY API website - documentation about SKY API for all Blackbaud solutions
- SKY API User Community - discuss SKY API with your peers
- SKY UX website - explains the user experience and design principles for new product developments and enhancements to Blackbaud solutions. It provides guidelines and tooling for the entire application life cycle. We recommend you use SKY UX to ensure a consistent, cohesive experience between customizations and applications from third-party developers and Blackbaud solutions. This resource is open source and hosted on GitHub.
- ”ON” API website - details about legacy endpoints
- K-12 User Community “ON” API - discuss “ON” API and “ON” SDK with your peers
- ”ON” API documentation update - for security purposes query string SSO's that contain a username and password are blocked and return a 403 error (as of July 22, 2019); follow the updated instructions to authenticate with the legacy “ON” API
- Blackbaud Swagger for OneRoster - documentation about Blackbaud API endpoints for OneRoster
- Blackbaud OneRoster - online help about OneRoster integration, including the EAP for Canvas,
- Blackbaud LTI - online help about Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI)
- IMS Global OneRoster homepage - OneRoster standards and governance
Join us again next week as we take a look at the next product and what they accomplished over the summer months while you were out. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you back here on Tuesday!
News
Blackbaud K-12 Solutions™ Blog
09/05/2019 9:30am EDT
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