Oklahoma Wave Integration Enhancements

8/13/2019

SchoolInsight has integrated with the Wave for nearly a decade to send student data to the state of Oklahoma.  Over the past few years, the Wave has made small changes to the way they request data from districts’ student information systems (SIS).  Our integration needed an update to match these changes, so we made improvements to provide better service to our customers. Our goal was to help districts better understand the status of data interchange and be able to resolve any issues that arise.  This article describes the updates.

Wave/SIF Data Main

First, we created a main page for all Wave/SIF related links, and put it on “Admin Main.” This gives more prominence to the Wave/SIF integration and makes it easier to access.

Admin Main > Wave/SIF Data

Verify Wave/SIF Data

We created a verification page that displays the status of the student data.  It shows all SIF objects and whether 1) the data is properly configured to successfully sync with the Wave, or 2) has errors/warnings that prevent syncing.  This helps admins easily identify areas where the data requires attention. We also provide links to access drill down tools to troubleshoot issues.

Admin Main > Wave/SIF Data > Verify Wave/SIF Data

Admin Notifications

To help admins be aware of Wave issues, we made a few changes.  First we added notifications to the system. Designate staff to receive notifications when data is not properly formatted for submission to the Wave.  This helps districts stay on top of data quality and Wave submission.

Admin Main > Wave/SIF Data > Wave Technical Contacts

Additionally upon login, SchoolInsight displays a popup notification to admins if the data has issues that prevent sync’ing with the Wave (due to errors/warnings on SIF objects). This will make admins aware of issues, and give a gentle nudge to resolve them.  This should be especially helpful during yearly rollover and setup for a new academic year.

Message Logs

In addition to detecting data configuration errors that prevent syncing with the Wave, users can also look at the actual messages exchanged by the systems.  Inspect the message logs to identify whether objects have been submitted to the Wave, or not. Improved filtering and sorting helps find any messages exchanged that resulted in an error.

Admin Main > Wave/SIF Data > Message Log

Outbound Message Queue

Admins can view the queue of messages waiting to be sent from SchoolInsight to the Wave.  If the Wave servers are not accepting messages (due to heavy load or downtime), those messages are not lost.  They are queued in SchoolInsight, and will go out when the Wave becomes ready to accept messages again. SchoolInsight polls the Wave every 20 minute to check status.

Admin Main > Wave/SIF Data > Outbound Messages