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How to enable and use the FACTS integration

Connect Orah to FACTS

Ronan Quirke avatar
Written by Ronan Quirke
Updated this week

Overview

With the new FACTS integration, Orah can provide an in-depth integration that will help ensure your data is consistent and accurate across the board.

What data can you sync?

Orah is capable of syncing a range of school information from FACTS. See below for the information that can be integrated.

One-way (read-only) sync from FACTS

  • Student information

  • Student contacts information

  • Houses (dorms) & student assignments

  • Groups (academics & non academics) & staff to student mappings

  • Staff information

  • Attendance history ​

Enabling in FACTS

FACTS API Overview

Orah uses the FACTS API (https://developers.factsmgt.com/home) to securely connect to your school data.

Setting up the Orah integration in FACTS

  • Schools must generate API keys in their FACTS system

  • The correct permissions must be applied

Steps in detail

  1. Log into your FACTS SIS portal

  2. Click the menu button on the top left. Click System, then Configuration > API Configuration > API Keys. Next click on the Add Key button

  3. In the pop up window, enter the Orah Subscription ID
    Subscription ID: f0d11c89cb52462caf2e7610857c6037

  4. Set the API key name as "Orah"

  5. Under “Scopes” select:
    “Read” for Academics,
    “None” for Gradebook,
    “Write” for People,
    “None” for Admissions,
    "None" for Billing if that is an option
    “Read” for Scheduling,

  6. Then click Generate. Make sure to copy the API Key that is generated and save it for your records as this key will only appear once. If you come back and regenerate the key, this original key will no longer work.

Orah required API permissions

Service

Permissions

Academics API

Read-only Access

People Information API

Read + Write Access

Scheduling API

Read-only Access

Configuring in Orah

  1. As an admin user, navigate to App Directory -> Integrations and select the 'FACTS' integration:


  2. Click the 'Connect to Orah' to configure the integration as follows:


    The settings / fields are as follows:

    1. Client secret: this is the API Key as configured in FACTS for this API application

    2. School code: this is the school year code for your normal academic year

How it works

By enabling this integration, your FACTS API credentials will be authenticated and saved to our Orah database. An initial sync will take place to import all students from your FACTS database and merge any existing students in the Orah database.

Managing your data

Syncing your data

You can set the automatic sync to occur once every 24 hours (generally overnight) or alternatively, you can perform a manual sync with a single click which will sync your student information instantly.

Writeback timings

When Orah writes data back, this is queued to send every 15 minutes but may take 5-10mins to complete depending on the amount of date to be sent to your school instance of FACTS.

Attendance dashboard

Attendance data for attendance insights and alerts is scheduled to sync hourly. In the event the sync cannot be completed within the hour, the data will sync intra-day at 11am and 2pm (local times to your school).

Student Syncing

Filter options

You can define what students are imported into Orah based on two filter options.

Grade levels
This can be set to any grade or year level defined in your FACTS instance.

Supported fields & mapping options

All the fields and mapping options available can be viewed and configured (if possible) from the integration settings page. For example, the Student sync object details all supported fields in the 'field mapping' panel.

Existing students

If you already have students in your Orah account, we do our best to automatically link existing students via individual matching references from within Orah and FACTS. If we are unable to match your students, you will find these students are listed on the debugger page where you can search and match these students.

Deleting students

As FACTS will manage your core information, you will need to mark a student as inactive in FACTS in order to remove them from your Orah account. Orah will deactivate the student which will archive their records.

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