What are archived sites for?

As the school year comes to an end, one of the most important transitions related to Schoolrunner is the archiving of your data for that recently-ended school year. Over the summer, we create an archived site for you. This site allows users to access past year school data at any point in the future. We freeze this data so that it always remains accurate. Here are some commonly asked questions regarding archived sites and the process of archiving your data.

What is an archived site?

An archived site is a separate website that has read-only data from a past school year. It represents the culmination of a particular school year, as recorded in Schoolrunner.

Why does this happen?

Archiving your data allows users to view complete, accurate historical information. Once your information is archived, it will be unaffected by any changes to your SIS or Schoolrunner configuration, allowing you to move forward and make any changes you want without having undesired retroactive effects.

What is the process?

When you're finished entering data for the school year, we take a snapshot of your entire system. We use that snapshot to create a separate Schoolrunner site specifically for that recently-ended school year. This site is read-only so that data can't be changed or created.

How long does it take to produce our archived site?

Taking your snapshot is the first step, but once we have that frozen data, we need to create a whole new site for you. This can take up to two weeks but is generally completed within one week. You're free to make any changes to Schoolrunner that you want in the meantime – the important thing is that we have your snapshot before you start making updates or modifications for the upcoming school year.

When does this happen?

This depends. The process needs to happen after you have finalized data in Schoolrunner for the recently-ended school year, and before you make any changes in preparation for the upcoming school year, regardless of whether those changes are in Schoolrunner or your SIS. The snapshot needs to happen in the interim between those two stages in what one might call the "Snapshot Zone".

How should you use your archived site?

Ultimately, this is up to you! But many users like to check archived sites to compare student course grades and test performance to past years. You can also check attendance trends from year to year, and draw contrasts between suspensions, communication, and other datasets as well. We ensure that former staff members don't have access to past data. Only staff members who can access your normal Schoolrunner site will be able to access your archived site.

What does the archived site look like?

Your archived site looks almost identical to your normal Schoolrunner site. The most obvious differences are that there is a banner at the top of every page to remind users they're in an archived site and cannot make changes and there are gray dashed lines around the edge of your page, as an additional visual cue.

You may also notice differences in features. Since archived sites represent a specific school year as of a particular point in time, they aren't updated when features are added or changes are made to regular Schoolrunner sites after their snapshot date.

How do you get there?

There are a couple of ways. The first is to navigate directly to YOURSCHOOLNAME.20XX-20XX.schoolrunner.org and log in normally. (Replace 20XX-20XX with a past school year for which you used Schoolrunner. For example, 2016-2017 or 2015-2016. You also need to replace YOURSCHOOLNAME with whatever your normal Schoolrunner address uses. For example, hogwartsacademy or localcollegeprep.)

The other option is to click the gear icon at the top of any page in your normal site, and use the "School Term" dropdown to choose a past school year. Archived school years have a small filing box icon which indicates that the data is archived. Changing terms like this will bring you to the same page for the past year, if that page existed last year. If it doesn't (i.e. you're viewing a new student's page who was not in your school in a past year), you'll be brought to the homepage of your archived site. Note: This option may not be available until later in the summer.