Using Sky API to Create Inquiries

Dino Vandenheede
Dino Vandenheede
Fifth Anniversary Name Dropper Participant Facilitator 1
in Education Management APIs

I'm interested in creating new inquiry records using POSTs. I believe I need to create a user first and then create an admissions candidate using that user ID. Is this correct? Has anyone used the SKY API to generate inquiries instead of using the standard Blackbaud inquiry form? Any insights or examples would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Comments

  • Stephen Boyle
    Stephen Boyle Blackbaud Employee
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply Name Dropper

    @Dino Vandenheede
    The operations you mention will create a Candidate in EMS, but not an Inquiry. An Inquiry exists prior to a candidate being created, though it contains candidate information. Processing Inquiries in EMS is one of the ways to create a candidate.

    That said, the API does not have the ability to POST inquiries today. As we announced in our PUBs, however, we are working on that capability as we speak and it should be available soon.

  • Dino Vandenheede
    Dino Vandenheede
    Fifth Anniversary Name Dropper Participant Facilitator 1

    @Stephen Boyle
    This is great to hear. Thank you for the update! If you need someone to do testing, I'm available.


  • Stephen Boyle
    Stephen Boyle Blackbaud Employee
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply Name Dropper

    @Dino Vandenheede
    The Inquiry (create) endpoint was recently released. It's the phase 1 version, so it only includes candidate, entering year and parent info. More info will get added to it over time. But if that is all you need, then this will work for you.

  • Stephen Boyle
    Stephen Boyle Blackbaud Employee
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply Name Dropper

    @Dino Vandenheede
    The Inquiry list (Get) was just released, and we will continue to add more data to the output of both the Post and the Get as we work on this area.

  • Dino Vandenheede
    Dino Vandenheede
    Fifth Anniversary Name Dropper Participant Facilitator 1

    I'm trying to use the inquiry (create) to add a question to the inquiry record.

    The built-in "Questions" field on the inquiry form (Misc block, just above UDFs) seems to have no writable equivalent in the POST schema. The value appears to be stored as comment on the candidate record (visible via GET), but I'm having no luck writing it via the API. Am I missing something?

    Could questions or comment field be added to inquiry (create) so integrations can populate it?

  • Stephen Boyle
    Stephen Boyle Blackbaud Employee
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply Name Dropper
    https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/313034#Comment_313034

    You are not missing anything. All the fields in the Miscellaneous block are not included in the Inquiry Post, as of now. We do have a backlog item to add them, but it had never been requested until now. I'll see about moving it higher up in priority.

  • Dino Vandenheede
    Dino Vandenheede
    Fifth Anniversary Name Dropper Participant Facilitator 1

    I appreciate it. Thanks for taking a look and considering moving it up in priority.

  • Dino Vandenheede
    Dino Vandenheede
    Fifth Anniversary Name Dropper Participant Facilitator 1
    https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/313045#Comment_313045

    Perhaps you or someone else can let me know if these fields are supported in Inquiry Post. I’ve been able to post standard fields successfully, but I’m having trouble with these specific ones:

    Current School - Current School Name Other
    Current School - Current Grade
    Parent 1 Info - Relationship to Student: I can get "Parent" to post but not "Mother" or "Father."

  • Stephen Boyle
    Stephen Boyle Blackbaud Employee
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply Name Dropper
    https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/313064#Comment_313064
    • For the Relationship to Student, the allowed list of relationships in BEM for users only has a Parent-Child relationship. So, Mother and Father on the Inquiry will be translated to the Parent relationship type on their user record.
    • For Current School - School Name (other) , if you are not seeing the data showing in that field let's get a case/bug created with Support.
    • The same is true for Current School - Current Grade - the data is not showing on the candidates record, start a case.
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