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SKY API newbie

Darin Seiler

We have been able to connect to SKY API in our environments using Powershell with JSON scripts and perform GET fetches on endpoints, but feel like the method we are doing it with Powershell is not easy, reliable and optimal. Using Powershell and JSON we can automate fetches on a schedule using a schedulwe but can result in duplicate rows of some data and removed rows when we are trying to extract if we pull 10,000 rows of data . We would like to understand what others are using as their tool too connect to SKY API more efficiently and reliantely. Is this typically Power BI? We haven’t used Power BI because we want automated scheduling. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated as we are new to SKY API and trying to mostly just GET data at this point to download.

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Comments

Alex Wong

@Darin Seiler
What is your end goal? custom report of data from RE NXT / FE NXT? app that integrates and add functionalities to your RE/FE NXT?

Darin Seiler

@Alex Wong custom list of data from endpoints. We take the data from the endpoints and then import that into our internal data warehouse system called Claris filemaker. we are leveraging sky, API for our blackboard higher education management solution to pull in academic SIS, admissions, enrollment management, and billing management data from end points. From there, we are able to create more customized reports across any Blackboard product and leverage crystal reports and other schedule functionality (and other data sources) to manage distribution of customized reports and data to all areas of our campus.

Alex Wong

@Darin Seiler
I don't know how well Powershell does with SKY API, however, one choice is to use Power Automate as there are direct connectors for SKY API for all endpoints to be accessed.

I did a quick search and it appears that Claris filemarker does have a RESTful API, so that would mean you should be able to call their API through Power automate as well.

Then the rest of it is just “get” and “set”. get data from SKY API, set (save) data into Claris filemaker, aligning the fields into Claris filemaker.

Once you have the data in the data warehouse, then the rest is easy.

What you do need to account for is how you are doing your CRUD operations. here's what you need to consider:

are you always doing a full sync? if not…
- how to handle records deleted in RE (constituent, gift, action, opportunities, etc), since the “get” operation on SKY API will not give you data on deleted
- how to handle records updated/modified, there are “some” update to records that does not trigger “last modified” date in RE, which in my opinion is a bug..but it is what it is.
if you are doing full sync, then you need to consider the time it takes to do full sync, and how often are you going to do a sync. (I do sync every 4 hours, 5x a day).

Darin Seiler

@Alex Wong Thanks, great feedback there. If you wanted to chat further about Power Automate in this scenario could you send me an email at dseiler@adrian.edu…?