Edlink is designed to serve companies with only a handful of customers up to those with thousands of customers. If you're a company who is already at scale, or who is looking to scale quickly, here are a few things to consider when scaling with Edlink:
Scaling Your Technology
We've split up scaling into two main categories: scaling your technology and scaling your operational processes. Scaling your technology is all about making sure that your systems can handle the increased load that comes with more customers. The toughest parts of scaling technology in the education space are typically syncing data at scale and error triage.
Syncing Data At Scale
Error Logging & Triage
Errors are frustrating, but an inevitable part of working with technology. Because of the nearly infinite ways in which systems can be used, edge cases are bound to pop up. When you're working with a small number of customers, it's easy to just fix the error and move on. But as you scale, you'll need to have a more robust system in place for tracking and triaging errors.
- Logging request IDs
- Logging error codes and warning codes
- Handling your own SSO errors
Scaling Your Operational Processes
This is a tougher topic and can cover a lot of different aspects of your business. Here are a few of the most common things that companies need to think about as they scale.
Onboarding New Customers
- Onboarding
- Sharing rules
Migrating Existing Customers
Migration of existing data is a common challenge (and often one of the most painful parts) of integrating with any new system. It's important to think about how you'll handle this before you start writing code. There are a few different strategies you might consider:
- No Migration: If data continuity isn't important (or your product doesn't store much data), then you might just consider starting fresh with the new data. A great time to do this is over winter or summer break when schools are out of session and classes are changing anyway.
- One Time Migration: This strategy involves the creation of a mapping table between your old data and your new data (or just the relevant entity IDs). You'll need to write a script to migrate the data from your old system to Edlink. This is often the simplest strategy, but it can be complex at scale (or if the data is scattered and disorganized). Edlink can often help with this process, providing assistance with the generation fo the mapping table.
- Continuous Migration: This isn't necessarily a migration, per se, but rather a strategy for keeping data in sync between your system and Edlink. This is often the most complex strategy in the long term, but it can be easier in the short term. Basically, you'll need to keep track of which data came from Edlink and which data came from your system. As you sync data from Edlink, you'll have to match it up on the fly with the data in your system.