Manually Importing Data to Meet The Teacher
Who should use this guide?
- This guide will help you with manually importing data to your Meet the Teacher platform. This may be necessary if:
- you don't have a student information system that we currently support, or
we have advised you to use the manual import method.
NOTE: If none of those apply, manual importation can result in duplicated records - if you intend to go ahead anyway and have questions please contact us via meettheteacher@tes.com
How to import your data
- In the navigation bar on the left of your system, click Data:
This will load the Data Dashboard. Go to the section called Imports.
If you do not see this section you will need to turn on manual imports via Settings > Data Import Source > Allow Data to be Manually Imported.
When you click on the type of data you wish to import you will be asked to upload a spreadsheet (in .csv format) and will see a list of the columns it must contain. Make sure the spreadsheet has a header row with these headings in it.
NOTE: if there are new or updated Students and Teachers records then those imports must always be completed before any other imports. The Teacher and Student details must match exactly to existing Teacher and Student details on the system.
Import Students:
- The advised data fields are as follows, please see the example spreadsheet demonstrating this below:
- Student first name
- Student last name
- Grade
- Student number - this would be their homeroom class
- Student SIS ID - this is a unique numerical identifier such as a student ID number
- Student date of birth, in MM/DD/YYYY format
Import Teachers:
- Advised data fields and example spreadsheet:
- Teacher prefix
- Teacher first name
- Teacher last name
- Teacher SIS ID - as previous, this is a unique numerical identifier such as teacher ID or person ID
- Teacher email
- Teacher department
- Teacher room
Import Parents:
This spreadsheet will have a line of data for every parent of every student, so if you have 100 students in the school each with 2 parents, you will have 200 lines of data. For example, a family with a mother, father, and 2 children will have 4 rows of data;
- Mother and child A
- Mother and child B
- Father and child A
- Father and child B
- Advised data fields and example spreadsheet:
- Parent prefix
- Parent first name
Parent last name
Parent SIS ID - as previous, a unique numerical identifier such as a person ID. This number is NOT the same as their respective student's, but unique to them alone as an individual record.
- Parent email
- Priority - this is the ranking of adults that are primarily responsible for the student, and may show on your SIS as 'Parent 1', 'Parent 2', etc
- Relationship
- Student first name
- Student last name
- Student SIS ID, student number or date of birth - the system will use the students' names and either their SIS ID, student number, or date of birth to create a relationship between the parent and student records in the system, and all data fields must match exactly
Import Classes:
This spreadsheet will have a line of data for every class of every student, so if you have 100 students each with 10 classes, you will have 1000 lines of data.
Please note that importing a classes spreadsheet will always replace existing class data within the system.
- Advised data fields and example spreadsheet:
- Teacher first name
- Teacher last name
- Subject - the name of the subject
- Class code - any subdivision of a subject, for example if you have two grade 5 classes for Music, these may be Mus-5/1 and Mus-5/2, or if you have separate Science classes for grades 5, 6, and 7, these may be Sci-5/1, Sci-6/1, Sci-7/1, etc. If you don't have subdivisions of a subject then you can replicate the 'Subject' column
- Class ID - a unique numerical identifier for each class
- Student first name
- Student last name
- Student SIS ID, student number, or date of birth - as previous, the system will use these fields alongside the students' names to assign them to the class, and all data fields must match exactly
Map Columns
Once you upload the file the system will attempt to match the expected column to a column in the csv file you are uploading, please check that this is correct before clicking Next. If you title the columns in your import files to the expected column names, the mapping should line itself up by default.
- As an example, here is Map Columns for the Students import:
Click Next and you will be presented with a summary of the changes (if any) being made. Any errors with the data will be highlighted and you'll be given some information to help you. Agree to these by clicking the 'I'm happy to proceed' button and click Next.
If you are adding or editing just a few teachers, students or parents then do not select Replace data on system with imported data as this will replace all your existing teachers, students or parents with the contents of the file.
- The data is then uploaded and confirmed. Click Done to be return to the Data Dashboard.
