How can a university truly see students beyond the scattered data? Let's explore the key steps SJ School of IT take to get a handle on their student data.
Meet Amina Patel, a second year student at Solution Junkies School of IT, studying Software Engineering.
Over the past term, Amina has interacted with the university in many ways, but her data is scattered across multiple, disconnected systems.
Over the past term, Amina's data has been captured in various silos.
This data fragmentation at the SJ School of IT leads to significant challenges.
To address these challenges for Amina and their students, the SJ School of IT embarked on a data unification journey with Data Cloud. We were their trusted implementation partner in this process, which unfolded in three key stages.
The first step is to get all of Amina's scattered data flowing into Data Cloud.
For each source system (e.g., LMS, Helpdesk, Events App, Student Finance), we configure data streams using Salesforce’s native connectors or external APIs. These create dedicated flows for each data source.
Each data stream populates a Data Lake Object (DLO). A DLO is essentially a raw, structured representation of the data from its source. For Amina, this includes fields like:
At this stage, all of Amina's touch points across the university exist as real-time data streams feeding into DLOs within Data Cloud. The data isn't mapped or cleaned yet, but it's all accessible.
Now, let’s harmonise it!
Now that all of Amina’s raw data is flowing into Data Cloud via Data Lake Objects (DLOs), it’s time to standardise and align it.
We map each DLO to Salesforce’s Standard Data Model (sometimes called the Canonical Model).
This turns messy, inconsistent field names into clean, consistent fields across all systems.
This process creates Data Model Objects (DMOs). These are harmonised versions of the data, ready to be used across the platform.
We then perform transformations to prepare the data for unification:
Now, Amina's data is harmonised, clean, consistent, and mapped to a standard model. However, a single, unified profile for her doesn't exist yet. Let’s get to it.
Now that Amina’s data is harmonised and structured in Data Model Objects (DMOs), it’s time to build a single, unified view of her across all systems.
We create a Unified Individual (Student) Profile using identity resolution rules in Salesforce Data Cloud.
If a Helpdesk record says "A. Patel" and the LMS says "Amina Patel" and they share the same email or ID we link them.
Once matched, Data Cloud builds a Unified Student Profile that combines all of Amina’s touchpoints:
All this information is now in one place, tied directly to Amina, and updated in real-time. By undertaking this journey of ingesting, harmonising, and unifying student data with Data Cloud, SJ School of IT can move from fragmented information to a powerful, student-centric approach. Now, all the hard work is done!
Join us next time to see what the SJ School of IT can do with this unified student profile!
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