Canvas has the ability to sync student grades to SchoolTool to save teachers time. When enabled, teachers have the ability to pick and choose the assignments they want to sync over, and choose the grading category the assignment is created in within SchoolTool. Syncing an assignment from Canvas will automatically create the assignment in SchoolTool, and transfer over student grades for that assignment.

Verify Grade Categories in SchoolTool

The first thing teachers need to do is verify the grading categories they have setup in their course in SchoolTool. This can be done by following the steps below.

  1. Go to the course grade book in SchoolTool
  2. Click the dropdown menu shown below and choose “Grade book setup”
  1. You will be brought to a list of the grade categories you have setup in your course. You will need to know these categories to setup grade syncing in Canvas.

Create Assignment Groups in Canvas

  1. Go to your course in Canvas and navigate to Assignments. You will need to create a group of assignments for each category you have setup in SchoolTool. This is done so that SchoolTool knows what category to place an assignment in when it is synced over.
  2. To create an Assignment Group, click “+ Group” on the top right.
  1. Give the group a name. Each group you create should have a name that matches the individual category names in SchoolTool.

Pair Canvas Assignment Groups With SchoolTool Categories

  1. Once you have created the groups that match your categories in SchoolTool, click the 3 dots up on the top right, then click “Sync SIS Categories”.
  1. A window will pop up that shows the assignment groups you have setup in Canvas. During this step, we will be linking each assignment group to their corresponding category in SchoolTool. First click the “>” button next to a category to view your course sections. You will need to do this for each assignment category you want to sync.
  1. Underneath “SIS Categories”, you will see a dropdown menu for each course section you have in SchoolTool. For each course section, click on the corresponding dropdown menu and choose the category you want that assignment group to sync to. For example, if the assignment group is “Graded Practice”, choose the “Graded Practice” category in each dropdown menu.
  1. Once you have chosen the categories for each of your course sections, for each of the assignment groups you wish to sync, click the blue “Sync Categories” button. If everything happens successfully in the background, you will see a green “Synchronized” button on the top right. Once you see this, you can click the “X” button on the top of the small window to be brought back to your assignment list.
  1. If you refresh your assignment page, you will see icons next to every assignment group that is being synced. This is helpful if you have many assignment groups and need to find the assignment group you are syncing.

Nightly Syncing

  1. By default, syncing will only occur when manually triggered within a teacher’s Canvas grade book. You can enable nightly syncing so that syncing happens automatically each night.
  2. To enable nightly syncing, go to your course and click “Grade Sync” on the left hand side.
  1. Within the “Grade Sync” page, click “Utilities”
  1. Turn on Nightly sync by clicking the button shown below. It will turn green when active.

Syncing Canvas Assignment Grades to SchoolTool

  1. In order to sync Canvas Assignment grades to SchoolTool, an assignment first needs to be placed in one of the categories you have setup for syncing in Canvas. If an assignment is not in one of these groups with the sync icon, it will not sync to SchoolTool.
  2. After syncing has been setup, each assignment will have a new icon next to it as highlighted below to indicate if syncing is active for that assignment. To sync an assignment, click the sync icon for the assignment. The icon will turn green when activated, as shown below. 
  1. You can also activate syncing for an assignment on the “Edit Assignment” page, as shown below.

Manually Syncing an Assignment

  1. To manually sync an assignment, first go to your Canvas course, then go to “Feedback” on the left hand side.
  1. You will be brought to your Canvas grade book. On the top of the screen, click the “Sync” button, then click “Sync to SIS”.
  1. A window will appear that lists the assignments you have activated for syncing. To make an assignment appear here, make sure it is placed in an assignment group that is setup for syncing, and that assignment syncing is active for the individual assignment. Check off any assignment you wish to sync. Click “Post Grades” to trigger the sync. Syncing normally takes up to 5 minutes to complete.