What are Clever Instant Login, Clever Rostering, and Clever Library?

by Jordan Clark

Clever develops rostering and single sign-on (SSO) solutions for schools and educational developers. Typically, Clever works with schools to sync teachers, students, courses, and enrollments between the school's student information system (SIS) and Clever's own database. After they're authorized by a school district, developers may use Clever to authenticate users into their platform or sync roster data from Clever into own application.

As a developer, you should understand Clever's offerings and how they may fit into your own needs. There are different ways to work with Clever's services and each offering comes with a different cost.

Clever Instant Login

Clever offers developers the ability to sign students and teachers into their apps through Clever's own single sign-on (SSO) service. There are two ways in which Clever allows school users to log into third-party apps:

  1. one in which the user begins the sign in process on your website and
  2. one in which the user begins the sign in process in the Clever dashboard.

The first method is to log into an application using a "Sign In With Clever" button on the application's homepage. A user who clicks this will be directed to sign into Clever with their Clever username and password (or external SSO provider like G Suite or Microsoft Active Directory) and then directed back to your application, where they should now be signed in.

The second method to for a user to select an app on their Clever dashboard. Clever then authenticates the user and then directs them to the selected application, where they should be signed in. Apps can be added to a user's Clever dashboard by the school administrator or by a teacher who adds the app to the dashboard through the Clever Library.

It is important that your application supports both of these authentication flows. Not only will users expect both to work properly, but Clever requires that both are functional in order to receive your "certification" to appear in the product library.

Clever Instant Login Pricing

Clever offers a free version of instant login for developers. This version will provide the app a subset of student data (e.g. their first name and last initial) but will not provide important information like the name of the school or district that the user is coming from, or any student email addresses.

Clever requires developers to pay for complete student and teacher profiles. The pricing for the base tier (Secure Sync Lite) which provides this level of access starts at $12/school/month with a minimum of a 40 school commitment; a yearly minimum cost of $5,760. This base tier does not include class roster data, which we will discuss in the next section.

Clever Rostering

Clever rostering allows apps to load lists of all users, courses, and enrollments from a schools SIS. This typically means that you will have some sort of nightly process that syncs and updates all of the school’s data if your system is capable of handling it. Clever also offers a mechanism to only load data that’s changed (though this is not enabled by default).  Schools can limit data with sharing rules that Clever provides to the schools administrator.

The pricing for rostering (called Secure Sync Enterprise) which provides this level of access starts at $18/school/month with a minimum of a 50 school commitment; a yearly minimum cost of $10,800.

Clever Library

Clever Library is a list of apps that teachers can try out without permission from their admin. Teacher's can browse the Clever Library of apps and add the app to their class' dashboard. Typically, the apps featured in the library are free. Teachers sign into these apps through Clever Instant login.

So, How Do I Start Integrating With Clever?

The first step to working with Clever is to sign up for a development application that gives you access to work with a sandbox district environment. Note that the dev app will be set up only for for SSO integration. If your app will require rostering, you will have to contact Clever directly. Once you're signed up, you should review Clever's documentation about Clever Library Certification, Library and District single sign-on, and rostering.

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