How Do I Run the SIS Synchronization for Student Information System Files in Alma?

Answer

The SIS Load, and synchronization of the user data in your SIS XML file to the user data in Alma can be run by triggering a job in the SIS/Student Information System Integration Profile.

Alma Roles Needed: General System Administrator

Table of Contents:

Run Job
Check Results

Steps to Run Job:

Go to Config>General>External Systems>Integration Profiles
You will see all the profiles you have configured, including Student Information System or SIS, or whatever you have named this profile.
Click on the name of the Integration Profile to open it:
On the General Information Tab of the Integration Profile, you should see the SIS SUNY SFTP for the shared SFTP server that SUNY is using for Alma integrations. This was configured for you, but if you’re not using this server, or do not see this information, contact SUNY Library Services if you need help setting this up.
To begin the process of running the profile, go to the “Actions” tab
The standard way to run an SIS load is to use the Synchronize job, which will add new users if they are not in your system, and will update any existing users with the data in your SIS file:
A few things to note to look at on the settings are:
- Match ID Type: this is the identifier that you will use to match your SIS file data with your Alma data.
- Unmatched Record: leave as “Add” if you want users who are in your SIS but not in Alma to be added to Alma.
- Swap All: indicates that all existing user records will be replaced by matching incoming user records. This setting is important to keep if you want matched users to have their data updated, with information like a new address or phone number.
When you’re satisfied with your settings, make sure you have a zipped file in the directory that the SIS integration points to, and select the “Run” button on the Synchronize Section. This will trigger a job to synchronize users.
When you’ve completed running the SIS job, you don’t have to do anything with the file you loaded in the SFTP folder. Alma will prepend the word old in front the zipped file, and will only process files that do not have the word old beginning in the file.

Checking Results:

You may view the results of your synchronize job from either the SIS integration profile or Admin>Monitor Jobs.

From the SIS integration profile:

Go to Job History:
You’ll see the jobs that have been run, and whether they were successful or not. If you only uploaded 1 zipped file, but see many more in the job, don’t be alarmed. Alma unzips the file and extracts 1 file per 100 users, so you should see many files processed if you have a large file:
Some things to take note of on this screen are:
- Did the job complete successfully?
- Did the # of files match the # of users in your file (1 per 100 users)
- Did you have failed users?
If your job ran successfully, select the ellipses on the right, and then select “View” to get more details from the job report:
The four areas that should be reviewed closely are which users were:
- Updated: these should represent users who represent a successful load/synchronization.
- Created Users: these should represent users who do not exist in Alma. Spot checking to make sure that you are not creating duplicate users because of missing identifiers in Alma is a good idea for this category.
- Rejected Users: Users who were not added/updated due to issues with matching or other data. This file should be reviewed and use to make changes to either your Alma data or your SIS load to resolve these issues.
- Unchanged Users: Review to make sure that there were not changes that should have been applied in Alma.
Initially, the Rejected Users will be the most meaningful report/data to review and take corrective action with. The Rejected Users will provide a useful Error Message that can be used to fix these errors going forward. To get to this report, select “Preview Records”:
The errors may identify data missing from the file, such as the email type in this case. Or, it may indicate that data that may need to be cleaned up in Alma, especially if an identifier exists in different records in Alma and the SIS load files: