The Challenge
Arizona State University (ASU) was moving to a new school information system (SIS) called Infinite Campus, which did not have the ability to fill out applications. To solve this problem, they built a new web portal to feed students applications and documents into Salesforce but they needed an automatic process to export the approved student applications and its documents from Salesforce to Infinite Campus. Without this integration, enrolled students wouldn’t be able to access their school information system, which includes content such as assignments, teacher-student communications, class registration, and other types of data.
Our Solution
Our proposal was to build a robust and automated solution that could export all student applications and their attached documents hourly to the Infinite Campus FTP server and also read the imported results. Additionally, we had to implement an automatic process that would allow Infinite Campus to be fed with the latest approved student applications as well as keeping advisors in Salesforce updated with the feedback received from Infinite Campus.
How we did it
Since Infinite Campus needed the information to be placed in their FTP in order to be consumed by their Data Import Utility scheduled to run hourly, our team decided to use Jitterbit as a tool that could be scheduled to export information from Salesforce and import their feedback. Extra implementation was necessary in Salesforce to guarantee the export of required applications and their corresponding documents. In this way, we avoid the submission of duplicated applications and ensure the re-submission of failed student applications.
What we used
The use of a virtual machine was necessary to install and configure Jitterbit to perform student applications’ exports and imports. The Force.com platform was also used to implement most of the required automations.
The Result
Thanks to the solution developed, Infinite Campus achieved full visibility into approved student applications. Thus, communication between ASU advisors and Infinite Campus was guaranteed, ensuring all approved student applications were exported to their FTP server. Additionally, automating the process of exporting these applications and their documents enabled real-time updates.
