Importing new constituents from Powerschool or other applications to RE/NXT

Jennifer Wyss

Every summer, we must import new constituents (students and parents) from OpenApply or Powerschool into RE. We have been using ImportOmatic and in surveying fellow international schools with similar needs, they also use ImportOmatic as the best solution. However, this still takes us 2 weeks of a full-time person to get this done, primarily because of the various relationships that need to be connected in each record, which requires multiple passes and checks. Does anyone have a better solution or suggestion? Thanks!

Warren Sherliker

If you have nxt we have a modern, bulk or transactional integration platform that would do the job. Infinitely configurable and ideally suited to this sort of job.


Just message me for details.


Due to forum rules we can't publicise the product name here! Slightly rediculous I know...


Cheers

Warren

Karen Diener

Have you reached out to IOM to see if there is a better way? Two weeks seems like a VERY long time. I wonder if the IOM profiles could be tweaked to work a little better and accomplish some of that at the time of import?

Karen

Alexandra Logan

My organization is also looking for a similar solution! We have two main databases that we work with, PowerSchool and Raisers Edge/NXT, and we've been looking for a way to get the two databases to talk to each other. I'm the person that has to enter the same information twice, into both databases, and can confirm that it's quite tedious and time consuming.

The only suggestion we've been told is to do is reach out to a company that would back up the database in Raisers Edge, export the PowerSchool information and then “dump” it into RE. We're very hesitant to do this because we're still in the process of cleaning up our RE database that's changed many hands over 15 years. We heavily rely on our IT person to do the backups; however, I'm curious if there's an easier solution that would allow me to handle the imports without relying on an outside party.

Kara Schroeder

I'm not familiar with Powerschool, but I do imports myself in Admin. If you can export your data from Powerschool in the columns needed to import in an Excel csv file, you can import them easily. You can determine the relationships before importing. This may be more complicated than I am aware, since I do not use Powerschool.

Jennifer Wyss

Hi Kara - thanks for your response! We do use Excel to export data and then to prepare to import. The data manager in our office does this so she knows more than I do, but we have been trying to improve this process for several years and even though we've refined it, it still takes lots of passes back and forth to Excel files. I do think the inequality of the fields between the two applications is one issue for us - we also don't have a shared ID between the applications so we are looking at instituting this which should also help us find a better solution.

Jennifer Wyss

HI Karen - I know we've worked with Omatic before to see how to simplify this, but I believe it has been a few years. This conversation prompted someone from Omatic to reach out to me so I will be back in touch with them to see if there is anything new we can try. Thanks!

Jennifer Wyss

Hi Alexandra - thank you for your note and I'm happy to let you know where we end up with this as we continue to look for solutions. Could you message me your contact details? Thanks.

Karen Diener

Jennifer Wyss:

Hi Kara - thanks for your response! We do use Excel to export data and then to prepare to import. The data manager in our office does this so she knows more than I do, but we have been trying to improve this process for several years and even though we've refined it, it still takes lots of passes back and forth to Excel files. I do think the inequality of the fields between the two applications is one issue for us - we also don't have a shared ID between the applications so we are looking at instituting this which should also help us find a better solution.

My (cautious) recommendation for a Shared ID is to use the social security number field in RE to store the external ID. It used to be a very firm recommendation because it is an active field on the RE search screen, and you can also do imports using that field. It was one of the best things I ever did when I worked with a school - so easy to add data to RE such as sports, clubs, special classes, etc.

I've become a little hesitant lately because of the scrutiny over keeping data such as Social Security Number in fundraising databases, and I fear that Blackbaud will not retain this for NXT. It doesn't seem like we'll be losing database view anytime soon, but it does give me concern.

Alias or Attributes are other options. I personally don't like Alias because you cannot do updates or imports to the data if you need to make changes (which should be rare, but I've had it happen). You cannot use either to do imports or lookups from the search screen, so it does add an extra step. If the SSN field ever goes away though, I would probably use Attribute.

Karen

Ann Marie Gallagher

"If you have nxt we have a modern, bulk or transactional integration platform that would do the job. Infinitely configurable and ideally suited to this sort of job."
We are implementing NXT now and have questions on importing/exporting, could you give me more information on the tool you are speaking about?

Warren Sherliker

Not allowed to openly promote products on here but will send you details via the PM message you have also sent Ann.

If anyone else is interested also please do PM me. We have a generic integration tool that supports bio, email, phone, education. gifts etc.. imports into RENXT. Well established, automated and very flexible…