Microsoft Teams & Grade Sync

Katherine Nolte
Katherine Nolte
Ninth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant
in Blackbaud Learning Management System™

Are there any schools that have successfully setup and used the Teams gradebook and Blackbaud grade sync? I've set everything up and have gotten it working with OneRoster & School Data Sync, so no help needed there. I'm curious to learn about how schools are using it.

I'm also curious to see if any schools are using the parent communication feature outlined in this video and this page.

I'd love to setup a Teams meeting ;) with a school that uses it so I can see the tool and integration in action.

Comments

  • Brandon Baxter
    Brandon Baxter
    Second Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    @Katherine Nolte
    Hi Katherine, we are trying to get Blackbaud and Teams to integrate with each other. If you have any resources or suggestions on how to get this done, I would love help! I'd also be happy to have a discussion on how to best use the tool and integration in action.

  • Stephen Alonso
    Stephen Alonso
    Sixth Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1 Blackbaud Certified

    @Katherine Nolte
    I was able to get it to work after months of tinkering and it was really neat to see grades and assignments just appear in Blackbaud. We were waiting for this functionality for a long time and were planning on using it for the upcoming year. The bad news to this is I just received an email yesterday, 5/8/23, from Microsoft saying they are deprecating grade sync at the end of this school year and you now need to use Excel imports/exports or their Graph API. I asked why they are moving from the OneRoster standard and how Excel isn't really a solution and they didn't answer that, only saying Excel and the Graph API are the way forward. Considering how long it took Blackbaud to add OneRoster support I doubt I'll see Graph anytime soon. The rest of SDS seems to be unaffected at this time but who knows for how long.

  • Katherine Nolte
    Katherine Nolte
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant

    @Stephen Alonso
    This is sad news but I'm glad you passed this along. It would be even worse to invest time & training in this solution only to find this out shortly after. Please keep in touch if you find another solution.

  • Tim Kramar
    Tim Kramar
    Fifth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    @Katherine Nolte After reading this post, I went searching. It looks like Microsoft is doing a total revamp of SDS. I couldn't find anything about Grade Sync features in there, but I pray that it will be available. I've been wanting that for a while and is preventing a full embrace of Teams at my school.

  • Tim Kramar
    Tim Kramar
    Fifth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    @Stephen Alonso When did this feature even become available with the OneRoster API?

  • Stephen Alonso
    Stephen Alonso
    Sixth Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1 Blackbaud Certified

    @Tim Kramar The OneRoster spec has supported it since v1.1, possibly earlier, and Microsoft had it for a few years, but you had to be a vendor that provided API access and all sorts of special things (I think it was just 2 or 3 providers that could do it originally). Blackbaud in their second implementation of OneRoster (which was OAuth 2.0 compliant) supported the way SDS wanted information and the sync of users & courses would work, but the gradebook still was an issue. Once Blackbaud did whatever they had to do to appear on that dropdown box on SDS it was supposed to just work based on this article (OneRoster Integrations and Open Authorization (OAuth) (blackbaud.com)) but there were never clear instructions on what to do to set it up with SDS, and even though they had “support” for it, it didn't actually work for several more months. In looking at old emails, idea board K12CO-I-2127 had them talking about how it was ready, then it turned out was incorrectly assigned the implemented tag back in mid-2021. I just kept trying the key and secret every few months to see if it suddenly worked as the information both sides needed was available, it just wasn't doing it for some reason. Microsoft also seems to be removing all information about grade sync as a lot of google searches now redirect to the main education page.


  • Tim Kramar
    Tim Kramar
    Fifth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    @Stephen Alonso When the API sync became available last year I had already done a CSV import and didn't want to mess anything up. Grade Sync was the major selling point for me and with the new SDS being implemented and removal of Grade Sync who knows. I'll still try to set up the API if that is available, but I know Teams won't get tremendous by-in from my Faculty other than Class Notebook.

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