Moodle Summit
Enrollment into Moodle
Moodle Site
Enrollment
Course
Enrollment
Section
Enrollment
Course Set-Up
gradebook
Heartland Business Systems
•Founded in 1990 – Little Chute, WI
•180+ Million Sales Revenue
•450+ Employees
•CRN Elite 250 Award
•Cisco 2013 Central SLED Partner of the Year
•Cisco 2011 Americas K-12 Partner of the Year
• Named to Inc. Magazine’s Hire Power awards as the top job
creator in Wisconsin for the Business Services vertical
•Voted top Information Technology Partner in WI by Corporate
Report Magazine
•VMware 2010 Academic Partner of the Year - Americas
•Value Added Reseller / Systems Integrator
•Key Partnerships with Technology Innovators
•Featured Nationally for our Success
Avastone Technologies
You determine the floor!
“30 Sec Elevator Speech”
Ok, 10 to 15 min…
Ground Floor
• SQL Server
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Many customers have it (whether they know it or not )
Usually sprawling out of control
Looking for virtualization, consolidation, HA, DR
Foundation for many of customer’s critical applications
• Avastone’s Offering
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SQL Power Play
Best expertise in the Midwest (Tony Sebion)
Remote or on-site analysis
Train staff on tools used
Report of findings and recommendations
Low customer commitment (1-2 days)
Heartland Confidential
Second Floor
• Most customers have data, not information…
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Reports that run overnight, never finish
No visible KPIs for front-line managers
Spreadsheets running rampant
Multiple systems, how to correlate?
No system of truth / trusted numbers
• BI Blitz
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Leverage tools companies own (Microsoft Office, SQL Server)
BI solution in 4 weeks, not 1 year!
Hand-in-hand with your staff
Leave you trained with reporting and dashboards
Continue to build upon this iteratively
Heartland Confidential
Third Floor
• Intranet / Extranet – SharePoint
– 50% of all intranets built on SharePoint!
– Community based collaboration
– Excellent document management / workflow
– Enterprise search
• SharePoint Deployment Planning Services
– Microsoft pays for SharePoint Assessment
– Utilize EA or SA credits (1, 3, 5, 10, 15 days)
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Heartland Confidential
Fourth Floor
• Party floor!
• It’s really all about relationships, isn’t it?
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM
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Not just for your customer relationships
Replace those Access databases
Application framework for LOB applications
Asset Management, Fleet Management, Student
Management, Transitional Care Management, “Any”
Management
Heartland Confidential
Fifth Floor
• Time to play nice together!
• Application Integration
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Cloud & On Premise
Secure
Translations, Mapping, Scheduling
Management, Monitoring, Exceptions
Adapters
Heartland Confidential
Sixth Floor
• Microsoft Dynamics GP
– Multiple CPAs with many years of experience
– Inventory control processes
– Streamline / Automate (Sales, Purchasing)
– Cash Management
– Budget Control
– Fund and Grant Management
– Strong focus on education
• Teacher Contracts (Avastone Solution)
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Heartland Confidential
Seventh Floor
• Web and Mobile
– Customers thinking “Mobile First”
– More web access via smartphones than PC’s
– Kentico CMS – Easy to use, tons of features
– Responsive Design, mobile optimized
– Mobile apps for iOS, Android, or both! 
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Heartland Confidential
Eighth Floor
• Development Center
– Custom built to customer’s specific needs
– Leverage Microsoft .NET framework
– Projects large and small
– Take over customer’s application support
– Avastone and Heartland – IT soup to nuts!
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Heartland Confidential
Avastone’s Team
Drew Poggemann
Director of Technology
Allen Schuette
Dynamics GP
Implementations
Sherry Berg
Dynamics GP
Sales
Chris Janssen
Business Solutions
Aaron Swaagman
Development Center
Jeremiah Brockman
Mobile & Web
Craig Gudeman
Business Systems
Tony Sebion
BI & Database
Jo Norman
PMO & Lean
Business Analysis
Websites
Marketing
SEO, Social Media
Graphic Design
Custom software
Staff Augmentations
Training Dev. Teams
Mobile Applications
Phone & Tablets
Web Development
SharePoint
CRM / xRM
Integrations
Enterprise Content Mgmt
SQL Server
Analytics
Visualizations
Business
Intelligence
PMO, PM
Lean
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Heartland Confidential
Moodle / SIS Integration
It’s a two way street
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Heartland Confidential
Integration Challenges
• Closed Systems – Many don’t really want integrations (all
you need is ours!)
• Standards – SIF tried but not strongly adopted,
challenging to configure
• Complex Environments – Multiple systems, multiple
technologies, cloud, on premise
• Tight Integrations – Database level can be brittle (most
common)
• Net Change Pattern – Supporting changes depends on
source system capabilities
• Management – Scheduling, exceptions, performance,
upgrades
Target State
Business and Technology Integration
• Secure – Job 1! Must follow FERPA guidelines and keep
Personally Identifiable Information (PII) secure
• KISS – Must be simple and straight-forward to setup
supporting cloud and on premise systems
• Flexibility – Adapt to specific mappings or rules within
district
• Scalable – Support small to large implementations
• Management – Alerts, notifications if / when problems
do occur
• Extendibility – Same model to integrate many systems
• Abstraction – Separate interface from implementation
• Reuse – Logic must be reusable across many districts
reducing time to implement. Pre-built adapters to
connect multiple systems
Example Architecture
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Leverage Middleware Framework
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Build Adapters
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Scheduling, Mapping, Adapters
Monitoring & Exception Management
Reduce custom coding
Configurable templates
Must be easy to use
Moodle (Courses, Gradebook, Enrollments, Groups, Roles)
Others (Library, GL/Finance, Professional Development, GAE)
Map to SIS environment
Advantages
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Leverage middleware capabilities
Application hosting portability
Pre-built adapters with ability to extend
Enterprise model for integration
Sample Integration Flow
Moodle
Enrollment
Assignments
Gradebook
Integration
Dashboard
Monitoring &
Exception
Management
Scheduling
(Queue, Time,
File, Query)
Mapping /
Translations
Middleware
Pre-built
Adapters
Secure,
encrypted
traffic
Courses
Enrollment
Assignments
Gradebook
SIS
Groups
Integration
Configuration
Courses
Users
Integration
Status /
History
LDAP
Identity Management
User Provisioning
SIS Integrations
SSO
Roles
Groups
Users
Roles
On-Demand
Integration
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Moodle Integration
• Many required Moodle web service apis
already exist (subset below)
– http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Web_services_Roadmap
core_course_create_courses() – create courses
core_course_delete_courses() – delete courses
core_course_update_courses() – update courses
core_enrol_get_enrolled_users() – get enrolled students in a course
mod_assign_get_assignments – get course assignments
mod_assign_get_grades() – get assignment grades
core_enrol_get_enrolled_users() – get list of users enrolled in a course
core_enrol_get_users_courses() – get list of courses a student is enrolled into
enrol_manual_enrol_users() – manually enrol a student to a course
Challenges
• SIS Environments
– Open up APIs for inbound integration
• Net Change
– Identifying records that have changed without
comparing all (which is inefficient)
– Conflicts (identifying master / rules)
• Flexibility
– Strong integration architecture with flexibility
to change some rules by district
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Heartland Confidential
Next Steps
• Establish a group of districts to be part of
the beta/pilot group (5)
• This group would help influence the design
• Continue to work with Skyward to gather
requirements
• Need to establish group by April 1st
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Heartland Confidential