Google Contacts Mover Plugin

Last Update
10/11/2023

Can't support this plugin anymore. Google keeps changing their contact import. And they no longer have a way to compose a message to ALL addresses in contact record by specifying a group. Which was kind of the point.
I once had a teacher in my district relate to me how she painstakingly copy/pastes every student and parent email address from PowerTeacher into her Google Contacts. She got me thinking, "about 10 classes  X  25 students  X  4 quarters  X  however many teachers do this  =  There has to be a better way."
Enter Google Contacts Mover, a simple way for teachers to export student demographic data out of PowerSchool and import into Google Contacts.
The process looks like this.

  1. In PowerTeacher go to the Reports page for a class.
  2. Click the link at the bottom titled "Download this class for import into Google contacts" and a file named "import4google.csv" downloads.
  3. Open up Contacts in your Google account, click the More button then Import. Upload the import4google.csv file.
  4. Repeat for each class you would like to have in Google.

This process creates two new contact groups for each class imported labeled "Course#-Section#-Students" and "Course#-Section#-Parents".
Each contact in the Students group will have the following contact info:

  • Student Name
  • Student email address (built in PS student email field)
  • Birthday (dob field)
  • Home phone (home_phone field)
  • Home address (street, city, state, zip fields)
  • Mother and father's name (mother and father fields)

Each contact in the Parents group will have the same info listed above except for the email address being the first two comma-seperated in the guardianemail field.
Having separate contact groups allows teachers to easily mass email students, parents or both.
There is also a page fragment that added a link "HOW TO - Add student/parent contact into from your classes into your Google contacts" to the bottom of the PowerTeacher home page (with instructions obviously).

Install Notes:

  1. Go to System - System Settings - Plugin Management Configuration
  2. Enable the Plugin

- If your updating from a version prior to 3.2, you must first go into custom page management and delete:
/teachers/home.Google_Contacts_Mover.content.footer.txt
/teachers/reports.Google_Contacts_Mover.content.footer.txt
and the entire /teachers/google_contacts_mover/ folder
- Users should not run the Google function to "Find and Merge Duplicates" after importing contacts. This would combine the student and parent entries. This is stated in the included teacher directions.

 

Version History

3.4 - Fixed the multiple addresses in a single email field in Google. Dang Google stop changing stuff! Please update everyone.
3.3 - In 3.2 I accidentally switched from pulling the built in student email field to the way my district formats things. My fault. Fixed in this version.
3.2 - Now a plugin!
3.1 - Noticed a small problem with the page fragment that inserted the csv link on the teacher reports page. It was inserted in both frames instead of just the content part. This version corrects that.
3.0 - Ready for PS version 8! Now using page fragments to insert the links into home.html and reports.html. This means it will not interfere with other customizations and/or PowerSchool updates. See the Database Extensions Advanced User Guide for future explanation. Also updated the teacher directions to reflect Google interface changes.
2.1 - I accidentally uploaded the version that my district was using, not the one for public consumption! Who is running this site geesh! Corrected in this version to pull from the built in student email field.
2.0 - Split csv import into two contact groups instead of combining student & parent emails in the same entry. Updated teacher directions to reflect this change.
1.1 - Minor update to accommodate changes in PS version 7.8.2.
1.0 - Initial release (based on PS version 7.6.2).

Download
Attachment Size
google_contacts_mover_v3_4.zip 154.3 KB