Compass Education
Dominant in Victoria and common in the other eastern states, which together with Sentral covers most of the market Synergetic does not.
| Category | SIS |
| Authentication | Service account username and password |
| Reaches | https://yourschool.compass.education |
| Needs an agent | No |
| Demo mode | Yes |
Capabilities
Section titled “Capabilities”sis.getRoster, sis.lookupStudent, sis.lookupStaff, sis.getTutorGroup
The credential is a real account
Section titled “The credential is a real account”This is the part to get right.
Compass exposes its data through service endpoints authenticated with a session cookie obtained from a username and password. There is no long-lived API token. The credential is a real Compass account.
So the one you use here should be a dedicated service account with read access and nothing else. Not a staff member’s login, and certainly not an administrator’s.
Reasons, in the order they will bite you:
- A person’s account stops working when they leave, change their password, or get MFA enforced.
- Everything the connector does is attributed to whoever the account belongs to.
- An administrator account has write access the connector never uses and should never have.
Ask your Compass administrator for a service account with read access to students and staff.
Session handling
Section titled “Session handling”The session is held in memory for the life of the connector instance and
re-established on a 401, because Compass expires sessions without warning and a
nightly roster sync that dies halfway through is worse than one that pauses.
You do not have to do anything about this. It is here so the behaviour is not surprising if you watch the logs.
Configuring it in Plugboard
Section titled “Configuring it in Plugboard”Admin, Connectors, Compass Education, Configure.
Settings
Section titled “Settings”| Field | Default | Value |
|---|---|---|
baseUrl | empty | Your Compass address, for example https://yourschool.compass.education |
includeInactive | false | Include archived users |
demoMode | false | Return a fixture roster |
includeInactive is off by default because a leaver should stop appearing.
Credentials
Section titled “Credentials”| Field | Value |
|---|---|
username | The service account username |
password | Its password |
Save and test.
How staff are identified
Section titled “How staff are identified”Compass reports user roles numerically. Role 1 is a student and role 3 is a parent. The staff roles are several, so staff is defined as “not a student and not a parent” rather than by listing every teaching role and missing one.
The practical consequence is that a new role type introduced by Compass will be treated as staff rather than being dropped, which is the safer failure.
What a person record carries
Section titled “What a person record carries”| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| External id | Compass user id |
| First and last name | |
| Username | The Compass display code |
| Type | Student or staff |
| Year level | Students |
| Form group | Mapped to the tutor group concept |
| Card number | When Compass holds one |
| Active | Respects includeInactive |
Troubleshooting
Section titled “Troubleshooting”| Symptom | Cause |
|---|---|
| Authentication failure on test | Wrong username or password. Try signing in to Compass with them directly |
| Worked, then stopped | The account’s password changed, or MFA was enforced on it. Use a dedicated service account |
403 on some endpoints | The account lacks read access to that area |
| Test passes, no people | The sync has not run, or the account cannot see enrolments |
| Parents appearing as staff | Should not happen; role 3 is excluded. Raise it if you see it |
| Three fictional people appear | demoMode is still on |
Alternatives
Section titled “Alternatives”Synergetic and Sentral.