Sync With Clever

Clever is a great program that will sync all our apps but we currently have to upload by doing an import. This is available with the older Education Edge version but not this one. This would be a huge help with younger students logging in.

  • Tammy Applegate
  • Sep 10 2020
  • Implemented
  • Attach files
  • Charlotte Ealick commented
    20 Jul, 2023 03:49pm
    We are having trouble with Clever sync due to our teachers who teach in multiple divisions. Clever syncs our divisions as schools. Has anyone solved this?
  • Admin
    Stephen Boyle commented
    20 Jan, 2023 04:12pm

    Bill, good call out.

    I just marked this topic, but the final changes to OneRoster needed for Clever went out on 1/10. That said, we have been gradually releasing more and more enhancements aimed at closing the gap on Clever requirements - and most were implemented before the end of the year. Some recent applicable changes that increased the functionality of Clever via Blackbaud's integration were the inclusion of Parent relationships in Nov, the table value mapping UI in October, the inclusion of the demographics endpoints (including Accommodations fields) as well as the inclusion address and phone data in Dec. You can find more about all this in our Changelog.

    The setup for Blackbaud ↔ Clever integration is here on the Clever site.

  • Bill Campbell commented
    20 Jan, 2023 03:53pm

    Since this forum doesn't seem to show when the status of something has changed (or I don't know how you see that), it seems useful to note the change for a topic like this that's over two years old and for which there seems to have been some debate on what Implemented is. To that end, I just received an email notification that this "Sync With Clever" idea has been Implemented so I assumed that was changed today, Jan 20, 2023.

    Can someone from Blackbaud add a note with a link to a KB article or blog post that explains how to do this now. Some past posts on this topic indicate that past changes to OneRoster make it possible to do this with data file imports/exports and some manipulation, but users have posted from experience that the OneRoster method is not particularly close to an automated sync experience. It would be great if syncing (not exporting) is now available! However, I don't see Blackbaud currently listed as one of the Clever-Managed Auto Syncs or SIS-Managed Auto Sync on the relevant page over on Clever's site.

  • Eric Eskildsen commented
    27 Sep, 2022 12:06am

    Until Blackbaud builds this out, feel free to reach out to me in the meantime.


    About 2 dozen Blackbaud schools are doing fully automated Clever sync using software I built for this.


    Google "Userbus" or reach out to me here for more info.

  • Brooks Rockett commented
    28 Aug, 2022 07:44pm

    This needs to be implemented ASAP. Unless Blackbaud is going to build it's own integration with all these different edtech platforms (please don't, it would take forever), Clever integration is vital. We can't keep working with spreadsheets and manual data entry forever.

  • Bill Campbell commented
    22 Aug, 2022 08:03pm

    I'm glad to see that this suggestion (and this other related one) has been marked as "planned" as of earlier today. I look forward to hearing from someone at Blackbaud in the future on what this means with regard to what kind of Clever roster syncing will be supported.

  • Kristofer Thurston commented
    19 Aug, 2022 03:47pm

    Schools need movement on this. It's been asked for by multitudes for ever.


    This is becoming more critical as I need it to push roster and parent data for our emergency management and reunification software. I could use oneroster to possibly make it a little simpler than it is right now, but Blackbaud absolutely refuses to follow the published standard there as well. If you're going to call it a oneroster export, it should follow the standard. Otherwise, you should call it a NotOneRoster export. It's terrible.


    So, I have to generate specific lists and save them, log in daily, manually export the lists, do a specific find and replace because blackbaud doesn't use standards for certain fields like grade level, then upload and import into clever to talk to everyone else.


    Please understand that things like this make me not want to spend a single further penny with your company. It's 2022 and you should be lightyears ahead of where you are and this is only a small fraction of your problems. GET BETTER NOW!


    Do I sound angry? It's because I am. Every other widely used SIS on the planet already uses these things and knows how to follow standards.


  • Bill Campbell commented
    11 Apr, 2022 03:18pm

    Clever has recently announced automation of account provisioning and disabling for Active Directory (and it already had it for Google Workspace). That seems another reason for Blackbaud to add automated (not building advanced lists or writing scripts that use the API) integration with Clever or work with them to become on of the 40+ SISs that currently support Clever Managed Auto Sync. Blackbaud K12 SIS is currently our master data source for account provisioning and disabling, but we had to do it by writing and maintaining custom scripts over the years that use Blackbaud's API. Not everyone has the time and resources to do that. Even for us, id Blackbaud provided real Clever integration, it would be useful as we now have at least one online service that requires rosters through Clever so we are having to develop yet another script that uses the Blackbaud API to create files to SFTP to Clever so we have some accessible way to sync rosters with 3rd party products. For us, SSO has been handled by pointing everything including Blackbaud at Azure AD and that has worked well so Clever IDM isn't a big deal for us. However, that does not address any service that require rostering so partnering/supporting automated data flow with Clever seems a good way for Blackbaud to do this without having to reinvent the wheel or deal with all the different online classroom services. Plus some schools might find Clever IDM a nice fit with Blackbaud SIS if they played nice together.

    When Blackbaud acquired Whipple Hill, many Whipple Hill SIS/LMS customers I knew (including my school) were initially concerned that the SIS/LMS would suddenly become this closed system with Blackbaud having little interest (or actually pushing against) integration with third-party products as Whipple Hill had done a good job of working with 3rd party services prior to that and Blackbaud not-so-much. I was happy to initially see that the Blackbaud K12 division, led by former Whipple Hill CEO Travis Warren, seemed to change to the culture of more interoperability Whipple Hill brought with the as part of the acquisition. I'm starting to feel that maybe that is waning a bit with the culture shifting back to trying to keep using Blackbaud products for everything by making interoperability not a priority.

    I will say that for us on the LMS side many teachers have naturally moved to using Google Classroom over the past few years when they can for a variety of reasons if not forced to use Blackbaud LMS. (Forcing teachers to use something for which they feel they have a better solution does not work great in the longer-term.) Blackbaud K12 is still a good SIS and master data source for both employee and student accounts. However, as Blackbaud LMS becomes less relevant for us, staying with Blackbaud for SIS will be less desirable without the 3rd party interoperability that will allow us to grow a best of breed academic software ecosystem that best serves our students and teachers.

  • Kristofer Thurston commented
    28 Mar, 2022 05:51pm

    Bump - This needs to be merged with


    It also needs to be implemented. The implemented tag on the other post is a lie.



  • John Bryant commented
    2 Feb, 2022 07:00pm

    This integration should already be a part of Blackbaud but it is not. OneRoster does not directly sync with clever.

  • JP Hale commented
    25 Feb, 2021 07:28pm

    Still no update on Clever syncing with Blackbaud? That sure would be nice.

  • Eric Eskildsen commented
    9 Dec, 2020 12:16am

    Until this is built out, I created software that can do this. It automatically sends your Blackbaud data to Clever on a schedule, no massaging needed. It's the first Google result for "Userbus" if you're interested.

  • Daniel Jones commented
    22 Sep, 2020 01:33pm

    I agree that this issue has not been fully resolved. If the OneRoster option was more automatic, it would be useful. But there is alot of manual manipulation to allow syncing. In order to update records in clever, you must edit data every time. A direct integration with Clever would be more helpful. There are several other SIS that do have direct SIS integration (Rediker, FACTS, Powerschool, Infinite Campus, just to name a few).

  • maer ben-yisrael commented
    11 Sep, 2020 05:18pm

    An earlier idea marked this as complete because of OneRoster, but that's not actually the case. The amount of manual data shoveling required to get the OneRoster Export into Clever is insane.

    We would like to see a proper API connector between K-12 and Clever.