Setting up the MIS-sync via Wonde
30th September 2023 copy
This guide is for Data/IT Managers who are setting up MIS-sync via Wonde and syncing for the first time.
THE BASICS ABOUT MIS-SYNC
With the MIS-sync integration live:
- Student and teacher accounts on Unifrog can be created using the information in your MIS;
- The information on student and teacher accounts can be synced with your MIS in one click – meaning when something changes on your MIS, it can be quickly updated in Unifrog.
We partner with Wonde to sync with your MIS. The information flows from your MIS to Wonde, and then into Unifrog. There is no way for information to flow back from Unifrog to your MIS.
Unifrog’s existing Privacy Policy covers all the data that is held on Unifrog (whether it comes through Wonde or not), and what it is used for. At the bottom of this guide you can see all the data fields included in the integration, and why we request them.
GETTING STARTED
Once your school has confirmed that you want to go ahead with the MIS-sync via Wonde, the process is as follows:
- You first need to have Wonde installed in your MIS. If this isn't yet the case, your IT team will need to arrange the installation with Wonde, separate to us.
- When Wonde is installed in your MIS, we inform them that you want the MIS integration with Unifrog. Wonde sends your IT team an email, inviting them to approve the request in your school/college's Wonde dashboard. This is separate to Unifrog and we cannot do it for you.
- Once you have approved the request in your Wonde dashboard, we connect you to Unifrog and start the integration.
THE APPROVAL PROCESS IN WONDE
When approving the request to integrate with Unifrog on your school/college's Wonde dashboard, some fields are mandatory for the sync to work, and some fields are optional. Lower down in this guide, we explain which fields are included in our MIS-sync, which ones are optional, and what all the fields are used for on Unifrog.
At the approval stage, you can toggle the optional fields on or off. You can change your mind about these at any point and edit the permissions in your Wonde dashboard. After making any changes to the toggles, you must click the green 'Update permissions' button at the top of the page. 
PREPARING FOR THE FIRST SYNC
Some fields are particularly important, and you might need to confirm that we have found the correct data on Wonde for them:
- Student name and email
- Form teacher
The person who is normally in charge of writing the Overall Reference for UK university applications.
- Form
The group of students that you want to see together for careers guidance and progression activities. Usually linked to the form teacher. They are sometimes called Tutors groups or Homeroom groups.
- Counselor (if using)
The person in charge of US university applications for a student. At international schools counselors often oversee all university applications for a caseload of students.
- Parent emails (if using)
If we cannot find the correct information for these fields in the standard places, you’ll need to describe to our team where it is held on your MIS. If we still can’t find it, we can go ahead with the integration without the information for these fields, and you can continue to enter it directly on Unifrog.
SYNCING YOUR DATA
How to sync your data
Our team does the initial sync, and irons out any issues.
From that point onwards, you are in charge of syncing your data. You can sync student and teacher data between Wonde and Unifrog both in bulk and for individual students / teachers.
After accounts are connected between Unifrog and your MIS, syncing between Unifrog and your MIS needs to be done manually – nothing happens automatically. We capture the data that is in your MIS and show you where it is different from what is on Unifrog, so you can review the discrepancies and choose whether to update. This means you stay in charge of the data that is in Unifrog.
Only teachers with editing permissions can sync data, and this is done on two views of the Manage page: the MIS-sync students view and the MIS-sync colleagues view.
When an update is made on your MIS, it can take a short while before it appears in the MIS-sync view on Unifrog, ready to be synced by you. We run partial updates every 4 hours, catching any changes in data, and full updates every 72 hours.
When you edit a field on Unifrog that is part of MIS-sync, it will be overwritten with whatever is saved for that field on your MIS the next time you sync the data. You might still want to edit this field manually on Unifrog, if you need the update to happen immediately and know that it will only come through from your MIS in the next day or so.
Syncing email addresses
Everything to do with syncing is very straightforward, except for email addresses:
- It’s okay for a student or teacher to have a different email address on Unifrog and your MIS – the accounts can still be matched and synced.
- If you want to update the Unifrog email address with the email address saved on your MIS, this will change the login details for this user. To avoid big problems, we don’t allow this to be done in bulk; instead, it has to be done one-by-one.
- You need to let users know that you are changing their email address on Unifrog, otherwise they won’t be able to login to Unifrog!
THE FIELDS IN OUR MIS-SYNC
We partner with Wonde to sync with your MIS. The way it works is that we must have the same set of requests for every school. Below, we go through every field that is a part of our integration with Wonde. To approve our requests for these fields, you need to go to your Wonde interface, which is separate to Unifrog (this is where the screenshots below have been taken from). Your IT team will know how to access this.
We only mark as ‘Required’ the data fields that are necessary for Unifrog to function at a school. Where we don’t absolutely need information in order for Unifrog to work, we mark the data field as ‘Optional’, and your school can decide whether or not to include these fields in the integration.
The data fields marked as ‘Optional’ allow schools and students to have more functionality on Unifrog – for example:
- Allowing schools to analyse how students with different characteristics use Unifrog, and what sort of destinations they end up in after leaving your school.
- Allowing Unifrog to flag to students special opportunities like work experience and scholarships that are particular to students with their characteristics.
- Sending students' parents information about interactions added for their child on Unifrog.
You can see full detail on all the data we collect on users and why we collect it, in our Privacy Policy here.
Employees
These fields allow us to create teacher accounts and keep them in sync with your MIS.
We need all teaching staff, and not only staff marked as ‘teaching staff’, because sometimes non-teaching staff need access to the platform (for example they might be an adviser but not a teacher), and because sometimes schools mistakenly mark teaching staff as not teaching staff. The school can decide who to sync on Unifrog, which means only people who need an account get one.
| Employees upi | Required | Unique wonde identifier |
| Employees title | Required | E.g. ‘Ms’ |
| Employees initials | Required | E.g. ‘KA’ |
| Employees surname | Required | E.g. ‘Anderson’ |
| Employees forename | Required | E.g. ‘Kim’ |
| Employees legal surname | Optional | E.g. ‘Anderson’ |
| Employees legal forename | Optional | E.g. ‘Kim’ |
| Employees email | Required | E.g. ‘kim@gmail.com’ |
| Employees teaching staff | Required | Is the employee a teacher |
| Employees current | Required | Is the employee currently employed |
| Employees role text | Required | The employee’s role, e.g. ‘Teacher’ |
| Employees user defined | Optional | Custom fields |
Here's how these settings look when you are setting up Wonde. You can choose to leave the toggles for the optional settings on or off:
Classes, Subjects and Groups
These allow us to create Forms and keep them in sync with your MIS (note that subject Classes are uploaded as CSVs by our team, though we can use your Wonde data to speed up the process of creating the right CSV. Editors can also still add Classes manually on the platform).
| Classes name | Required | E.g. ‘10A’. Commonly used for form names |
| Classes description | Required | E.g. ‘10A’. Sometimes used for form names |
| Classes subject | Required | E.g. ‘Art’ |
| Classes code | Required | E.g. ‘Ar’. Commonly used as an internal code for a class name |
| Subjects name | Required | E.g. ‘Art’ |
| Subjects code | Required | E.g. ‘Ar’. Commonly used as an internal code for a class name |
| Subjects active | Required | Shows if the class is active. |
| Groups name | Required | E.g. ‘10A’. Commonly used for form names |
| Groups code | Required | E.g. ‘10A’. Sometimes used for form name |
| Groups type | Required | Sometimes defines if it’s a form name or a class name |
| Groups description | Required | Sometimes defines if it’s a form name or a class name |
| Groups notes | Required | Sometimes defines if it’s a form name or a class name |
Here's how these settings look when you are setting up Wonde. You can choose to leave the toggles for the optional settings on or off:
Students
These allow us to create student accounts, and assign them to the correct forms, form teachers, and counselors, keeping it all in sync with your MIS.
| Students upi | Required | Unique Wonde identifier |
| Students initials | Required | E.g. ‘GS’ |
| Students surname | Required | E.g. ‘Smith’ |
| Students forename | Required | E.g. ‘George’ |
| Students middle names | Required | E.g. ‘Michael’ |
| Students legal surname | Optional | E.g. ‘Smith’. |
| Students legal forename | Optional | E.g. ‘Michael’ |
| Students gender | Optional | E.g. ‘Male’ |
| Students date of birth | Optional | Allows Unifrog to suggest opportunities to the students specific to their age. Affects how some parts of Unifrog work for students – for example, the Placements tool can work differently for students who are 18+. |
| Students email | Required | E.g. ‘student@schoolname.com’ |
| Students postcode | Optional | A student’s postcode is used to show them their distance from different opportunities (e.g. university courses and apprenticeships), as well as to flag special opportunities to them that are relevant to where they live. |
| Students current nc year | Required | Used for year group / grade. |
| Students leaving date | Required | Shows if a student is now an alumnus. |
| Students UPN | Optional | Allows schools to more easily upload data from Unifrog into other systems, for example into the school’s MIS, and to Compass+. |
| Students user defined fields | Optional | Used for various purposes, for example it can be where a school stores information on students’ forms, form teachers, or counselors. |
Here's how these settings look when you are setting up Wonde. You can choose to leave the toggles for the optional settings on or off:
Student contacts
This is optional, but we can use these fields for the parent/guardian fields on Unifrog, allowing parents to receive updates about their student, and to create parent accounts
| Contacts email | Optional | Used for the parent/guardian fields on Unifrog, allowing parents to receive updates about their student, and to create parent accounts |
| Contacts priority | Optional | As standard, we pull the contacts with Priority 1 and Priority 2 for our Parent / guardian fields. We can instead use any of the fields below, if your school does not use Priority to identify the best contacts |
| Contacts parental responsibility | Optional | |
| Contacts relationship | Optional | |
| Contacts correspondence | Optional | |
| Contacts mailmerge | Optional |
Here's how these settings look when you are setting up Wonde. You can choose to leave all of these toggles off:
Student characteristics
This is optional, but we can use these fields to fill the following characteristics on Unifrog:
- LAC (are they a Looked After Child)
- Services child (is one of their parents in the armed services)
- EAL (do they speak English as an Additional Language)
- PP (are they Pupil Premium)
- SEND (do they have Special Educational Needs or Difficulties)
- HA (are their a high achiever)
- Ethnicity
- Nationality (what passports they have)
The other characteristics that can be added for a student in Unifrog are not affected by the MIS sync. The fields we request on Wonde are:
| Students SEN | Optional | Allows schools to analyse how Unifrog is used by different sorts of students. Allows Unifrog to suggest opportunities to students specific to their characteristics, for example scholarships and work experience. |
| Students premium pupil indicator / eligible | Optional | |
| Students FSM / FSM6 | Optional | |
| Students in LEA care | Optional | |
| Students ever in care | Optional | |
| Students service children | Optional | |
| Students ethnicity | Optional | |
| Students English as additional language | Optional | |
| Students ethnicity code | Optional | |
| Students nationality | Optional | |
| Students English as additional language status | Optional | |
| Students gifted and talented | Optional |
Here's how these settings look when you are setting up Wonde. You can choose to leave all of these toggles off: