Education solutions available through School Data Sync

School Data Sync (SDS) gives schools quick and easy access to many free Microsoft Education tools that accelerate learning, support inclusive instruction, and help prepare students for their future careers.

Intune for Education

Intune for Education is a simple, cloud-based device and application management service designed to help schools keep devices secure and students productive.

SDS makes using Intune for Education easy by creating and managing user accounts within the security groups required for device and app management.

With Intune for Education, you can:

• Manage desktop and mobile devices students use to access class content
• Configure and assign apps that students use in class
• Control how students and teachers access and share information
• Apply school security requirements to devices and apps

For more information, visit microsoft.com/intune.

Class teams for instruction

When SDS syncs classes, it creates a Microsoft 365 group for each class and assigns owners (teachers) and members (students) based on SIS data. When rosters change, SDS updates the group membership automatically.

Previously, as soon as a teacher accessed a new class team, all students were immediately granted access to the team. Feedback from schools revealed two issues with this practice:

• Teachers sometimes accessed new class teams unintentionally, which gave students early access to class teams that weren't ready.
• The immediate sync between Microsoft Entra ID and Teams could trigger many team provisioning requests at once, which caused system delays.

To address these concerns, Microsoft added an option for educators to activate their class teams when they're ready.

Now, depending on the SDS configuration:

• If automatic team creation is enabled in SDS:
  • SDS creates both the Microsoft 365 class group and the class team.
  • Educators get early access.
  • Students and other members gain access only when the educator selects Activate.
• If automatic team creation isn't enabled in SDS:
  • SDS creates only the Microsoft 365 class group.
  • Educators create the class team manually in Teams.
  • Once the team is ready for students, the educators select Activate to give students access.

This new feature gives educators full control over when students engage with their class environment.

Roster APIs for education app developers

Many education apps rely on class rosters, but this data is typically locked in SIS systems. Teachers often spend time manually importing rosters into apps, which is inefficient and prone to errors.

SDS, combined with the Education Graph roster APIs, simplifies the process by providing standardized roster access for application developers. This feature solves compatibility challenges with hundreds of SIS vendors and proprietary data formats.

Roster APIs allow for scenarios like:

• Getting all classes in a school
• Getting all users in a class
• Getting all the classes an educator teaches

Assignment APIs

Developers can also use Assignments APIs to integrate their apps with Microsoft Teams assignments. Assignments APIs allow apps to interact with assignments created outside of Microsoft Teams.

Key resources include:

• educationAssignment: The core assignment object
• educationSubmission: Student submissions, grades, and feedback
• educationResource: Learning objects linked to assignments or submissions

Apps can use these APIs to:

• Add assignments that link directly to their content
• Submit and update grades
• Create a student dashboard that displays upcoming assignments

Microsoft Teams uses the same Education Graph APIs and provides a model for developers to build similar workflows into their solutions.