Q: change student info in Apple School Manager
After completing the setup assistant within School Manager I was left with 468 students and 31 instructors. In the templates I used to upload info through SFTP (using Filezilla) I assigned each student to the correct class by giving them a grade level, class id and so fort. Each class had several teachers.
But all this info got lost when I uploaded the templates. Now every class has only one instructor, but there are no students in the classes. I thought classes would automatically populate based on the tags that the students have been given. Same goes for the instructors, I have to manually add instructors to the classes, although I had already done that.
If I however search for individual students, then I can see that the correct grade levels were applied. Grade level, Class ID, Class name, it apparently is not the same. So I must reassign students to their correct classes. I have to convert all students to manual IDs, because I cannot change anything when everything is tied to SFTP uploads. Eventually I connected all students to their correct classes.
Then I noticed that the wrong password policy was selected for each student. Although location-wide every student should have a 4 digit pin, they now have 8 letter number combination. And no way to change it for the bulk, I will have to change it to 4 digits manually. Right?
Also this manual madness also applies to changing class info per student? I cannot change a whole classes' class id?
When I change a students or instructors info in their 'Individuals' accountinfo, (namespelling not correct) I also have to delete the former account from their class and have to fill the empty spot again with updated profile information.
Please somebody tell me that it is really easy and that I have just overseen a filtering/bulk/dynamically change info in all tables option in School manager!
So far I like the promise of ASM, but I have been frustrated by it's steep learning curve (SFTP upload problems) and scarcity in options.
TLDR/my actual question: Is there an option in ASM to filter out multiple persons, to change settings in bulk (like setting 4 digit login method for a class at once) and to make sure that when info about an individual has changed those changes are applied to all data tables within ASM?
Posted on Aug 29, 2016 1:08 PM
In reply to my own question: I have found out that it is possible to edit password policy and other info of groups of selected students in ASM. I was really glad that I did not have to rehook to SFTP or to manually edit 468 students' appleids. When looking at 'individuals', you can sort by role or grade and make a selection of students by using shift and/or command options like you normally would. You cannot drag to select though. After you have selected you can change various parameters for your selected group. After that you can print out new password instructions for your selected group. Nice.
Posted on Aug 30, 2016 2:47 AM