Apple School Manager settings

In the sidebar, go to Apple sync → Settings (the Apple sync group appears once Apple sync is switched on for the school; if you can't see it, turn it on under School settings → Sync services). The page is called Apple School Manager settings and has four sections: General, What is exported, SFTP connection and Location. It reopens on the section you used last, and the section is in the page address (?section=), so a link you copy opens on it.

In the General section:

• Apple sync enabled — the master switch for Apple sync on this school. It's the same switch as Apple School Manager under School settings → Sync services; switching it off also takes the Apple sync group out of the sidebar.
• Daily scheduled sync — when on, the export is built and uploaded automatically every day at about 02:00 (UK time), using the SFTP details below. If the SFTP host, user or password isn't saved, that day's run is skipped for the school. Leave it off if you'd rather build and upload by hand from Apple operations.
• Sync format — the export layout. There is one option, Apple: it writes Apple School Manager's own CSV files (students.csv, staff.csv, classes.csv, courses.csv, rosters.csv and locations.csv). It is not the OneRoster layout: these are the six files Apple School Manager's own CSV import uses.

The export always contains the school's current people: students, and staff (members of staff and admins), whose account is Active. Suspended users (leavers) are left out, and that is how Apple School Manager learns someone has gone: an account that stops appearing in the upload is deactivated and deleted after 120 days. Governors and observers aren't exported.

Person ID — the identifier written as person_id (and person_number) for every student and staff member. Apple School Manager matches people on this id, so it must be the id the roster in ASM already uses:

• Realsmart ID (default) — right for a school we have always synced to Apple.
• MIS ID — for a school moving to us from another provider that built the ASM roster from the MIS (for example, SIMS person ids). Keeping the same ids means ASM updates the existing accounts instead of creating a duplicate of everyone and deactivating the originals. People with no MIS id (service accounts, manually created users) fall back to their Realsmart ID.

Changing this setting on a school that already syncs will change every person's id in the next upload — which is exactly the duplicate-everyone outcome described above — so only set it once, before the first upload.

Group types to export — which kinds of group become classes in Apple School Manager (and so in Apple Classroom). The types are the same ones the Entra and Google group syncs use: Teachers of, Houses, Registration groups, Role groups, Year groups, Subjects and Groups (teaching sets and anything else, including groups with no type yet). Tick only what teachers should see as classes; for most schools that is Groups and perhaps Registration groups. Nothing ticked means every type is exported. Select all and Clear all are above the list. The Groups that will sync preview under the checkboxes shows, live, what the current selection exports (it appears while Apple sync enabled is ticked).

Teachers of groups are never exported, even if their type is ticked. Protected groups still export when they are hand-built. A protected group that shadows a live MIS class does not — its membership is frozen, so it would publish last year's students under this year's class code. Each class lists its first three teachers as instructors, and only students and staff who are in the upload appear on a class.

In the SFTP connection section, enter the details Apple gave you:

• SFTP host — the server address Apple provided.
• SFTP user — the SFTP username.
• SFTP password — the SFTP password. This is a masked field: once saved it shows as dots, and leaving it blank when you next edit keeps the stored password unchanged. Only type into it to replace the password.

The SFTP details are per school; they can't be pushed across a trust.

Every row of the export is tagged with a location — Apple School Manager's name for a school within your organisation — and locations.csv maps that location's ID to a display name. By default the export uses this school's Realsmart ID as the location ID and the school name followed by " - Realsmart Sync" as the location name. For a school we have always synced, leave both fields blank.

The Location section matters when a school already has an Apple School Manager roster from a different provider and is switching to Realsmart. Apple School Manager treats a different location ID as a brand-new location: the old one stays behind with every device, class and Managed Apple ID assignment still attached, and the school ends up with two. To take over the existing location instead, copy its details from the old provider's export (or from Apple School Manager) into:

• Location ID — the location_id the old provider used (for example 392-4006). Written to every student, staff, class and course row and to locations.csv.
• Location name — the location_name from the old provider's export (for example MIS-Marden High School). Written to locations.csv.

Both fields are optional and independent: set the ID alone to keep the default name, or set both. Blank means "use the default". The override is per school and can't be pushed across a trust from the MAT settings screen. Set Person ID to MIS ID at the same time (Step 3) — keeping the location but not the people ids still duplicates every account. Before the first upload, check Preview the Apple export — locations.csv shows exactly the ID and name the export will send.

Select Save settings. To check the credentials actually connect and to build/upload the export, go to Apple operations — its first action is a Test SFTP connection button.

Admins authorised for more than one school also see Apply across MAT at the top of this page. It can push Apple sync enabled, Daily scheduled sync, Sync format, Person ID and Group types to export to the schools you choose; the SFTP details and the Location are never pushed (see Apply sync settings across the trust).

The end-of-year pause (see Cloud sync is paused) doesn't stop this export: Realsmart builds it itself, from whatever is in Realsmart at the time, so check the preview before the daily run if you've made big changes.