Little SIS admins must complete a few essential tasks as the school year ends to ensure a smooth transition from one academic year to another. This article walks through key admin tasks to perform at the close of the school year. By following these guidelines, you can prepare Little SIS/Little SIS Premium for the summer break and be ready for a fresh start in the upcoming academic year.
Note: If you missed it, be sure to watch the Labs Summer Fest Session 2: Gopher for Chrome. The recording with time stamps and slide deck are a available in the Labs Club. If you have not yet joined Labs Club, see Joining the labs club.
In this article you will learn how to:
- Bulk Archive Active Classes
- Avoid Orphaned Classes - Transfer Ownership Before Deleting Users
- Bulk Delete Provisioned Classes
- For those admins using Little SIS Premium:
- Roles and School Tags
- Additional updates
Bulk Archiving Active Classes
As the school year concludes, reviewing and archiving classes that are no longer in use is a good practice. Archiving these classes declutters the Classroom homepage for teachers, co-teachers, and students and provides a clean slate for the upcoming year.
- To bulk archive classes in Little SIS, you can useArchive classes from theBulk Actionsmenu at the top of the page.
Avoiding Orphaned Classes - Transferring Ownership Before Deleting Users
When deleted users own Google Classroom classes, those classes are effectually orphaned. This is especially problematic if there are still students in the class, as they can continue to interact with one another unsupervised if the class is set to allow students to post to the stream. This is why we always recommend transferring ownership of all Google Classroom classes prior to deleting a teacher account.
You may choose to transfer these classes to a service account or to another user in the domain, like the teacher taking over for the one who has left the district. Regardless, keep in mind that transferring ownership acts as an invitation, and the new teacher must accept that invitation before you delete the primary owner’s account in order to avoid orphaned classes. Many districts choose to simply suspend teachers rather than deleting them right away, which would still allow the classes that they own to be transferred to another user. In addition, the primary owner is retained as a co-teacher in the Classroom, and the new owner can later remove them.
In Little SIS for Classroom, you can identify classes that need to be transferred by filtering to the Primary Teacher in the Explorer, and then use the Bulk Actions > Teacher actions menu to change the primary teacher of all these classes. Little SIS can optionally send the former owner a message alerting them to the change – the new owner will receive a message from Google Classroom, prompting them to log in to Classroom and accept ownership of these classes.
Note: Only active classes can have their ownership changed, and the new owner will show up as a co-teacher in the tool until they have accepted the invitation to take ownership of the class.
See Orphaned Google Classroom Classes and the heading: How can you find and fix orphaned classes?
Bulk Deleting Provisioned and Declined Classes
Provisioned class: A class that was created for the teacher and the teacher has never accepted or declined the class.
Declined class: A class that was provisioned and then declined by the teacher.
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To bulk delete classes in Little SIS, you can use Delete classes from the Bulk Actions menu at the top of the page.
Little SIS Premium Tasks
Edit Roster Sync Jobs
You need to update the alias so that the class is new when it gets created. Use this step if you do not export your academics year from your SIS.
- Open Little SIS Premium.
- Navigate to Jobs > Roster Sync Jobs.
- For a job, click the ellipsis and Edit.
- Review Class Alias:
- Go to step 3, Data Mapping.
- Click the settings cog.
- Update the school year so that it is unique.
- Click Save.
- Review Inclusion/Exclusion rules:
- Review existing rules and adjust as necessary.
- Review Automations
- Go to step 6, Automations.
- Review and adjust the thresholds for manual approval. The number triggers approval for # classes are created and # students are created.
- Click Save.
- Now when you disable the job the changes are saved and the jobs are ready for the next academic year. You only need to enable the job.
Disable Scheduled Roster Sync Jobs
After setting up a roster sync job, you can run it manually or enable the job to run automatically. Automated jobs should be disabled at the end of the school year.
Disable a Scheduled Sync Job
- Open Little SIS Premium.
- Using the left navigation pane, go to Jobs, then Roster sync jobs.
- In the list of jobs, locate the job to disable.
- Set the Enable Job toggle to OFF.
See Enable and disable a roster sync job
Disable Guardian Sync
If you are using Guardian Sync, now is a good time to review and edit those jobs and then disable them too. Disable Guardian Sync
Teacher Review, Clear Pending
Are you noticing a steady increase in classes pending teacher review? This growing list may include outdated or irrelevant classes, reflecting changes in staff or the academic calendar. Here, we shed light on why and when you might consider clearing these pending classes and how to do so effectively.
Warning: If you are transitioning away from Teacher review, be sure to first disable Teacher review, before Clearing out Pending to prevent classes from being reassigned. If Teacher Review is not disabled, but Pending are cleared, those classes will be re-assigned during the next sync.
- Navigate to Home in Little SIS Premium.
- In the Teacher Review card, click Clear Out Pending Teacher Review Classes.
Roles and School Tags
Roles and Permissions
Double check your Roles, making sure those who have access still need access and that their permissions are still appropriate for what they can and cannot access.
See Permission Breakdown and Definitions
School tags
School tags are how you give someone access to Little SIS such as admin staff or instructional staff. It is a way to chunk classes together so that a subsection of users can access those classes. School tags define what those users see in Little SIS. Once assigned, School tags are available in the Explorer to filter by.
See School Tags and Apply School Tags to Classes
Additional Updates
Adding an SSH Key in SFTP Settings
In addition to using an SFTP username and password, we now allow you to use an SSH or PUB key file to authenticate secure connections for your SIS exports.
Warning: For our Infinite Campus users, Infinite Campus is deprecating the username/password authentication method for SFTP exports. You must set your exports up using this .pub key file method.
- To start, you’ll need to create your keys within Infinite Campus.
- Once your key is created, you must download the public key file to upload it into Little SIS (step 4 of the linked instructions).
- In Little SIS Premium, navigate to Administration > General Settings and scroll to the SFTP settings box.
- Click on Add SSH Key, and upload the .pub file.
- Once uploaded, go back into Infinite Campus and complete steps 7-10 of the linked instructions to confirm your connection tests successfully.
See, Adding an SSH Key in SFTP Settings
SFTP Port Change
To enhance the security of your data transfers, we have updated the port for your SFTP connection. You must update the port in your SIS for your data exports to Port 2225. We will continue to support connections on Port 22 until October 1, 2024.
| Document Version | Date | Description of Change |
| 1.0 | 3/25/2024 | Added animated GIFs and removed secondary menu access to archive and delete classes |
| 1.1 | 6/19/2024 | Updated webinar link, added article link to find orphaned classes, updated job edits, roles and school tags. AF reviewing |
| 1.2 | 7/5/2024 | Removed span tags that impacted search |