Blackbaud OneRoster → Apple School Manager connection fails with 500 error (Claris Connect) — anyone solved this?

Sue Hoyer

Hi everyone,

I'm hoping someone here has run into this and can point me in the right direction — I'll admit up front that a lot of this is above my technical depth, and I've been leaning heavily on AI tools just to understand what's actually happening under the hood. I'm the sole IT/admin person at a small school, so I don't have a dedicated integrations team to bounce this off of.

Background: We're a new Blackbaud school this year (migrated from FACTS), and I'm trying to connect Blackbaud to Apple School Manager using the OneRoster (Other) option, so our student/staff rosters sync automatically for device and app management.

The problem: Every time I try to connect, it fails with a 500 Internal Server Error. Using my browser's developer tools, I can see the actual failing request goes to connect.claris.com (Apple School Manager uses Claris Connect behind the scenes for this), and it comes back with a generic error page with no useful detail.

What I've tried so far:

• Generated Key/Secret credentials in Core under System tools > Integrations > OneRoster (Provider: Standard, OAuth 2.0, not legacy OAuth 1.0)
• Tested 4 different variations of the API Root URL (my school-specific Blackbaud URL, and a few different versions of a "baseline" URL that both Blackbaud and Claris support gave me)
• Double and triple-checked the Client ID, Client Secret, and Token URL (https://oauth2.sky.blackbaud.com/token) each time
• Tried in a fresh Incognito browser window with all extensions/ad blockers disabled
• Tested this across multiple different days

Every single attempt fails identically, regardless of which URL format I use, which makes me think it's not something wrong with my credentials or setup, but something breaking on the Claris/Apple side of the connection.

I've opened cases with both Blackbaud support and Claris support. Blackbaud has confirmed their OneRoster endpoint is working correctly on their end, but Claris hasn't been able to resolve it yet.

Has anyone here successfully connected Blackbaud to Apple School Manager via OneRoster (Other)? Did you run into anything like this, and if so, how did you get past it? Any guidance, even just "here's what finally worked for me," would be hugely appreciated. I'm genuinely out of my depth on the technical side of this and just trying to get our devices ready before students arrive.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Crystal Bruce

Hi @Sue Hoyer I checked the status of your Blackbaud support ticket and it does look like the guidance is to see what's happening with Claris support. I'm glad you have a case open with them! Have you found out anything else from their support team? I am also waiting to see if the community comes forward with any success cases.

Sue Hoyer

I'm meeting when them today. I'll update once I meet with them. I had one person reach out, but I've had no reply to my communication yet. Eager to get this resolved!

Thanks!

Crystal Bruce

Hi @Sue Hoyer checking in and hoping for a positive outcome!

Sue Hoyer

Got it fixed! Claris was great. I deleted my instance and tried again, found some repeats of users that needed to be deleted and got connected. Thanks!