This article is for IT Admins. You will learn about the Schoolbox Calendar integration, how to enable the integration, information about the data that's synced, how to troubleshoot, and general FAQs.
Overview
Schoolbox is an all-in-one learning management system (LMS), community portal and engagement platform for K–12 schools. The Schoolbox calendar is an easy-to-use interface that keeps the school community engaged and involved in whole-school activities in one location.
Each user sees different events as only relevant events are pulled into their calendar from a range of sources, including:
Campus calendar(s)
Class and group calendars (including assessment dates and group events)
Fixtures
Why enable the Schoolbox Calendar Integration?
Schoolbox is used by 950+ campuses globally, and their Australian office is in Melbourne.
Campuses using the Schoolbox as their LMS will have all students accessing Schoolbox daily for timetables, communication and collaboration with teachers and parents.
As students have extra-curricular activities in Clipboard, syncing Sessions and Fixtures into Schoolbox will make it easier to see all their extracurricular commitments, including training sessions, rehearsal times and sports fixtures in place!
It's an end-to-end encrypted connection between Clipboard and your SIS.
If you would like more information on Schoolbox, please look at the website: https://schoolbox.com.au/
What data will be pulled into Schoolbox?
The VCAL integration pulls in your most relevant day-to-day Sessions and Fixtures information from Clipboard into the Schoolbox Calendar for students only.
Prerequisite
A Schoolbox account that is integrated with your SIS
To enable the Schoolbox Integration, you require IT Admin access in Clipboard.
As an Admin user responsible for IT, you will be required to begin the integration process so that the information from Clipboard can be pulled into each student’s Schoolbox Calendar.
Only IT Admins have access to Integration. If you are unsure whether your integrations with Clipboard are working, share this article with your Clipboard IT Admin user.
Update Schoolbox permissions in your Schoolbox Account.
Setting up the integration
Within Clipboard, go to Integration (bottom left)
Select API and click Issue New Token
Generate a Clipboard API token for this integration (keep a copy of this)
Within Schoolbox, a Schoolbox 'Superuser' must enter the VCAL URL with the correct details in the Calendar Subscription area of Schoolbox Administration. The VCAL URL to use is as follows: https://api.clipboard.app/sessions?sisId=[externalId]&format=ics (note: you don't need to replace [externalId], Schoolbox will automatically replace this)
Place the API token in the Authorisation field in the Schoolbox VCAL URL settings (Clipboard Endpoint Token).
Once the subscription has been set up correctly, all users will see their Clipboard calendar in Schoolbox for the next three months. This means they will see it along with other events, learning activities, bookings, excursions, etc.
Where a school would like to filter these results to only pull through non-team-based events, you can create a non-team-based event subscription with the additional parameter, which can be added to the end of the configuration as shown below:
If your setup appears correct but the non-teams subscription still isn't pulling through, please contact Schoolbox Support, who may need to enable further permissions.
If you need further information on Subscribing to External Calendars in Schoolbox, please check out their help article.
You can see in the image below an example of a student's Schoolbox calendar with their extracurricular activities appearing from Clipboard in the greyish blue.
Note: The Schoolbox Calendar can take up to 2 hours to refresh. This is beyond Clipboard's control.
How it works
By enabling this integration, Clipboard's Fixtures and Sessions, such as training sessions and music lessons, will synchronise with Schoolbox and import the corresponding Fixtures and Sessions for each individual student.
Managing your integration
Syncing your data
Data from Clipboard is automatically synced into Schoolbox, where the updates can take up to 2 hours to sync into each student’s Schoolbox Calendar.
Troubleshooting
The primary challenge with integrating Schoolbox occurs when Sessions and/or Fixtures fail to populate from the Clipboard to the Schoolbox Calendar. This results in Schoolbox being unable to retrieve the data from the Clipboard and display it accurately. The following steps below are reserved for VCAL Integration issues, which account for the majority of errors that occur.
VCAL Integration issues -
To check the settings of the VCAL Events go to Admin > Calendar > Subscriptions in Schoolbox. The following screenshots below show; a working environment with no errors and a school environment that is encountering issues as seen by the error message in red.
To solve this issue:
Go to Admin > Calendar > Subscriptions
Ensure the VCAL EVENTS SCREEN > is set to ON
Under the Subscription where the error is showing up for the Clipboard you will need to copy the entire URL and store it in a notepad
Delete what's currently in the address and save that
Paste the URL back into the field and save again
All that should be required is for the school to click SAVE on the bottom of the screen, and the error will clear, and Schoolbox will attempt to reconnect to the clipboard servers as normal.
The reason why you will need to go through this process is that the URL has already been checked and deemed to be an invalid URL as its failed more than 5 times. Schoolbox will only make another check once they see that the URL has been changed.
Other troubleshooting issues
If you encounter problems with certain students' Schoolbox Calendars not displaying Fixtures or Sessions from Clipboard, please contact us at [email protected]. We will investigate the issue first before escalating it to Schoolbox. To help us troubleshoot efficiently, please include specific student names and provide whole-page screenshots of their Clipboard and Schoolbox Calendars.
If you notice missing information related to Fixtures or Sessions in Schoolbox, such as location or time, please contact Schoolbox directly, as they are better equipped to investigate the issue in their environment.
Where can I check that the Schoolbox integration is working?
You can check by viewing a student’s Schoolbox schedule and looking at relevant Fixtures and Sessions in Clipboard. Here you can view and compare the timetables and see if they are syncing correctly.
FAQ
Who will have access to the Schoolbox Calendar integration?
Integrating the Clipboard Schedule into the Schoolbox Calendar is exclusively reserved for students. It will provide them with up-to-date information on their daily sessions and fixtures. This integration is not meant for use by staff or parents.
How frequently does Schoolbox pull data from Clipboard?
Schoolbox pulls information on Sessions and Fixtures within Clipboard shortly after the Session has been created in Clipboard. The time it takes, on average, to sync the data into the Schoolbox Calendar is up to 2 hours. This is beyond Clipboard's control.
How far in the future and the past will Clipboard Sessions show?
Clipboard Sessions are shown on the Schoolbox Calendar for up to one month in the past, and three months in the future, for a maximum of 200 Sessions.
I have questions about Security, Privacy and Data Handling
Schoolbox has created some informative documents on its website that outline its policies around Privacy Policy, Support Policy, Implementation & Deprecation of Features & Custom Development Work Requests Policy, and the Legal Act. These documents can be found here.