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      Staff Directory Automation with SFTP

      Automate your staff directory.

      Automatic Nightly Imports

      If you have a system that is able to automate a nightly export of the program – such as HR, Active Directory, Student Information System, etc. – then you don’t need to maintain the Staff Directory routinely at all. It will just be exported every night from your system and kept up to date automatically as staff members are added, removed or updated in your system.

      For that to work, you must have a good clean dataset. If you have old users and other old information in your dataset, it will show up in your website's Staff Directory, and that’s not what you want. In that case,  you can do a one-time export from your system and then clean it up manually. It produces a spreadsheet, and you upload that as a CSV file.

      Key points for automation

      • File Transfer: via SFTP

      • Format: .csv

      • Headers: Include headers as the first line of each file. Match the exact order and spelling of the headers listed below.

      • Filename: Match filename exactly.

      CSV Files

      The Catapult Staff Directory uses two CSV (Comma Separated Value) files. 

      Or just download directly here: 

      • “site-import.csv” – stores the school site or district site contact information.
        • Name, Address, City, State, ZipCode, PhoneNumber,FaxNumber


      • “staff-import.csv” – staff-related contact information, such as staff name, phone number, email, and other personal contact info.
      NOTE: The site file should be the names of each of the school sites. The names should be how you would like it to appear in the dropdown in the staff directory on the website. 

      How to get to sample files in Catapult

      Relationship Between Site and Staff Files

      To properly automate the staff directory, you must supply two CSV files: site-import.csv and staff-import.csv. Every staff member must be associated with at least one site, and the site they are linked to must appear in the site file. For each staff entry, the Site field must exactly match one of the Name entries in the site file. While most fields in the staff file are optional and can inherit values from the site file if omitted, the required fields—First Name, Last Name, Email, and Site—must be provided for a successful staff entry.

      CSV File Header Details

      For the staff-import.csv file:

      • First Name*: The staff member's given name.
      • Last Name*: The staff member's surname.
      • Email*: The staff member's email address.
      • Position: The job title held by the staff member.
      • Department: The department where the staff member works.
      • Phone Number: The main contact number for the staff member.
      • Phone Ext: The extension number, if applicable.
      • Home Page: The URL of the staff member's personal webpage (if available).
      • Picture Url: The URL where the staff member's photo is hosted online.
      • Room Number: The office or room number assigned to the staff member.
      • Grade: The grade level associated with the staff member, if applicable.
      • Profile: A brief biography or description of the staff member.
      • Priority: Used to determine display order or prominence in the directory.
      • Visible: Indicates whether the staff member should be displayed.
      • Site*: Must match one of the site names listed in the site file.

      For the site-import.csv file:

      • Name: The official name of the school or site as it should appear in the directory.
      • Address: The street address of the site.
      • City: The city where the site is located.
      • State: The state where the site is located.
      • Zip Code: The postal code for the site.
      • Phone Number: The primary contact number for the site.
      • Fax Number: The site's fax number.
      • Visible: Indicates whether the site should be shown in the directory.

      * Required field

      Tips 

      Keep on the lookout for the following circumstances that can be difficult to automate from your SIS or HR systems. 

      • People who shouldn't be there: Maintain an exclusion list to remove users who should not appear in the directory.
      • Phone extensions: You can take these out or just leave it blank and it will default to the school's phone number. 
      • Staff Websites/ Teacher Sites: Staff Websites are a link to any URL such as a google site that the teacher or staff member wants to highlight. If you have these it's usually not in the system. 
      • Photos: Photos must be public to pull into the system so will have to be a url from a location publicly accessible on the internet. 

      When your files are ready to be synced the Dev Service team will send you credentials to send your data and we'll start receiving your files.

      1) Email DevServices@catapultcms.com the files to test them out. 

      2) When they look good send your files to the credentials the dev service team gives you and we'll toggle on the automation.