Understanding these core components will help you model the data you receive from your Edlink integrations. Essential rostering data is available from pretty much any Edlink integration, but please be aware that not every model (or field) will be present in every integration. The availability of data depends on the source SIS or LMS system and the permissions granted.
Here's the upshot:
People
People are the individuals in the system: students, teachers, parents, and administrators. Each person has a unique, stable Edlink ID that you should use as your primary identifier. A person object contains demographic and contact information.
Districts and Schools
These are the primary organizational units. In any given integration, there will be exactly one District object, which serves as the top-level container. The district typically contains one or more School objects, which represent the physical or virtual campuses.
Sessions (Academic Terms)
Sessions represent periods of time, like semesters, trimesters, or quarters (e.g., "Fall 2025"). Classes (or courses) may be associated with one or more sessions.
Courses and Classes
This is a critical distinction:
- Course: A template for a course of study, like "Algebra I" or "Intro to Biology." It doesn't have specific teachers or students.
- Class: An instance of a Course that is taught during a specific Session. It has an assigned teacher and a roster of enrolled students (e.g., "Mrs. Smith's Period 2 Algebra I").
You will primarily work with Class objects to find rosters.
Enrollments
Enrollments are an important model for connecting other entities. An enrollment is the link that defines a specific Person's relationship to a specific Class. It contains the person's role (e.g., "teacher," "student") within that class.
To get the "roster" for a class, you will list its enrollments.
Agents
Agents define the relationships between two people. This is most commonly used to represent parent/guardian relationships to students. An agent object links an "observer" (e.g., a parent) to a "target" (e.g., a student) and describes the relationship (e.g., "mother," "guardian").