Integrating with Slate

Sending Spreadsheet Data to Slate Manually

To bring your spreadsheet data into Slate, you'll first need to create your desired export template in SlideRoom. Next, you can run your export and save it in the location of your choice. Once your Slate account is configured to import your data, you can send this file.

Slate allows manual and automated importing of data from an external system into their own. Manual importing of data requires a file in delimited, fixed-width, XML, or similar format.

This works best if you configure SlideRoom to export using the .csv file format. When you import your file into Slate, you can map the fields from your .csv to the appropriate fields in Slate.

Each time you upload a new .csv file, new records are created in Slate, or existing records are updated.

Sending Document Files to Slate Manually

To export PDFs or other documents from SlideRoom, first create your export. When running your export, you have the option to choose which file types to include. Once you've established the data types to include in your export, you can save the files to your desired location.

To import documents into Slate, you'll need to first upload them to your Slate SFTP server. This server is part of your Slate account. To make this work, set up an SFTP integration in SlideRoom. To do so this:

• Click the gear icon at the top right of your dashboard, then click Account Settings.
• From the menu on the left, click Integrations.
• Select link SFTP server and you'll be prompted to provide the information necessary to connect to your server. This can be provided by Slate.

Once this integration is created, it becomes an available delivery option when exporting your files.
 
When the files are delivered, Slate can access and import them into your account. You can match PDF files to your records in Slate based on the file name generated. SlideRoom provides several file naming options. so reach out to a member of your account team if you need to customize the file naming structure.

Automating Data Transfers to Slate

SlideRoom allows you to set up automated exports using the Export Scheduler. This allows you to set the time, frequency, and destination of your desired exports.

Once the data is delivered to Slate, it can be automatically imported to your Slate account.

Here's what Slate has to say about this process:

Most frequently, the school delivers files to import to an /incoming/ directory on our SFTP server, which we poll frequently (at least once every 15 minutes) and load any files matching a specified filename mask. We can poll a remote SFTP server, too, but to the point of SFTP server availability, since we can ensure that our servers remain highly available, the experience is usually most reliable when using our infrastructure. These files can be delimited, fixed width, XML, etc., and we typically recommend that delimited files with column headers be used, since you can add/remove columns at any time without breaking the import process within Slate. This allows for asynchronous changes to the data feed specifications. The files are routed into our Upload Dataset tool, where the format can be predefined to handle all value and code translations, ensuring that the year-over-year changes to accommodate new fields or values is straightforward and can be handled within admissions.

Additional Resources

If you're in need of additional assistance with these processes, feel free to consult Slate Technical Support or reach out to SlideRoom Client Support.