Veracross and Interoperability

Veracross is a SaaS-web-based Student Information System (SIS). It uses a single-record database and personalized communication tools to hold Personally Identifiable Information (PII) of students, educators, staff, and more. Essentially, a learning institution would use an SIS (like Veracross) to keep track of data like:

  • demographics,
  • schedules,
  • facilities, etc.

When edtech products share data with systems like SIS providers, this data can improve user experiences. The ability to share data with other education data systems is referred to as interoperability. When interoperable, the two systems can:

  • provisioning accounts automatically and ahead of the school year (known as “rostering”)
  • automatically share learning outcomes to a learning institution’s gradebook
  • retrieve attendance data for analysis
  • … and more!

The Veracross API

Veracross allows other products to integrate with it using its API. The Veracross API uses measures like OAuth, HTTP, and JSON. Developers can choose endpoints from the Authorization API or the Data API – based on the data needed.

  • The Authorization API: Third-party vendors can use this API to enable single sign-on (SSO) integrations. To build a single sign-on (SSO) integration, developers must have a pre-approved OAuth application.
  • The Data API: Third-party vendors can use this API to enable integration features like rostering, grade passback, analytics, and attendance.

Alternatively, since Veracross is OneRoster compliant, edtech developers can build a OneRoster integration. More on OneRoster and its data is below.

The Authorization API

The data that the Authorization API can access are all tied to credentialing, including:

  • Client id
  • Client secret
  • Scope
  • Code
  • Access tokens
  • Refresh tokens.

The Data API

Since the Data API covers a wider range of functionality to access, we can group the accessible data by type.

There is grade information like:

  1. Assignment Grades
  2. Grading Periods
  3. Numeric Grades
  4. Qualitative Grades
  5. Rubric Categories
  6. Rubric Criteria
  7. Ruber Scales
  8. Rubrics
  9. GPAs

There is class information like:

  1. Classes
  2. Block Groups
  3. Blocks by Group
  4. Class Assignments
  5. Class Meeting Times
  6. Classes - Permissions
  7. Courses
  8. Departments
  9. Enrollments
  10. Rooms
  11. Rotation Days
  12. Subjects
  13. Rosters
  14. Sports
  15. Athletics
  16. Teams
  17. Extended Care: Registration
  18. Class Attendance
  19. Academic Classifications
  20. Class Curriculum

There are people data like:

  1. Students
  2. Parents
  3. Relationships
  4. Class Teachers
  5. Staff/ Faculty
  6. Applicant Relationships
  7. Applicants
  8. Application Checklist
  9. Applications
  10. Citizenships
  11. Household Members
  12. Households
  13. Relative Relationships
  14. Relatives
  15. Boarding: Dorm Students
  16. Emergency Contacts

And some miscellaneous information like:

  1. Dorm Attendance
  2. Dorms
  3. Years
  4. Languages
  5. Behavior
  6. Contact Info
  7. Events
  8. Patient Conditions
  9. Patient Medications
  10. Households
  11. Master Attendance
  12. Student Logistics
  13. Class Attendance

If integrating by OneRoster, there are the 3 endpoints that can be accessed in OneRoster 1.1 and the data associated with them:

  • Rostering: to enable the management of academic sessions, classes, courses, demographics, enrollments, grading periods, orgs., schools, students, teachers, terms, and users.
  • Resources: to enable the management of resources.
  • Gradebook: to enable management of the line items, results, and categories.

Notice that by choosing to use OneRoster, the amount of data that can be accessed is dramatically less than using the Veracross API.

Use Cases

Of course, when an edtech product integrates with an SIS, new data becomes available to use for user experiences. All use cases around interoperability focus on automating or simplifying steps for users, such as:

Case: A third-party product analyzes trends in attendance or student performance. Integrations can pull these data fields to the product and sync automatically. This would stop educators from performing tasks that would only duplicate this data. By stopping these extra tasks, integrations can cut down educators from feeling overwhelmed, end insecure methods used to complete these tasks, and/or limit human errors.

Case: A third-party app visualizes data for educators with charts/graphs of student progress. An app could be more valuable with integrations that sync SIS information or data that isn't easily exported.

Case: A third-party platform streamlines the attendance-taking process for educators or automates reports. Some SIS providers, like Veracross, let platforms write back to some fields. For educators, that means not duplicating data or collecting data for a complicated reporting process.

Wrapping it up…

Edtech developers can access SIS information from Veracross through the Veracross API or OneRoster. In a direct API connection, developers can use the Authorization API or the Data API. Once built, the API integration can perform functions like SSO, rostering, grade passback, analytics, attendance, and more. If using OneRoster, a developer has limited access to data around rostering, resources, and grade books. Edtech products and their teams can produce better user experiences through interoperability by automating or simplifying steps. With improved experiences, edtech products become more valuable to educational institutions overall.

Learn More about Integrations

If you’re interested to learn more about Integrations here’re other articles we’ve written:

If you're looking for a partner who can help guide you through developing LMS integrations (like these), then let’s introduce ourselves. We’re Edlink!