MyEdBC DistrictSync Guide

DistrictSync converts MyEducation BC General Data Extracts (GDEs) into the CSV format SpacesEDU and myBlueprint+ use to keep your roster up to date. It runs as a single program on a school district server — there's nothing to install separately, no database to set up, and no web address to visit.

This guide covers installing DistrictSync, running its setup, the MyEd BC files it needs, and what it produces.

Installing DistrictSync

1. Download the file for your platform from the Releases page:

• Windows: DistrictSync-windows.exe
• macOS: DistrictSync-macos.dmg — open it and drag DistrictSync into Applications. The first time you open it, allow it under System Settings › Privacy & Security.
• Linux: DistrictSync-linux — run chmod +x on it before the first run.
• A command-line-only macOS build (DistrictSync-macos) is also published for Macs with no desktop.

2. Put the file anywhere convenient — a folder like C:\DistrictSync\, /opt/districtsync/, even a USB stick. Your settings, logs and run history are saved to your user profile, not next to the program file, so where you keep the program doesn't matter.

The Windows download is code-signed. Windows should name myBlueprint Corp. as the publisher rather than warning about an unknown one. You can confirm this yourself before running it: right-click the .exe, choose Properties, and open the Digital Signatures tab.

You may still see a blue "Windows protected your PC" screen for a while after a new version comes out. SmartScreen builds trust from how widely a specific file has been downloaded, which takes time even for a signed app — it doesn't mean anything is wrong. Click More info, check that the publisher reads myBlueprint Corp., then click Run anyway. If the publisher shows as unknown, stop and contact us — a signed release should never show that. The first launch can take up to about 30 seconds while Windows unpacks the program; wait rather than double-clicking again.

The macOS and Linux downloads are not yet signed, so those platforms show their usual first-run prompts for an unsigned app.

For servers with no display (headless Linux, Docker, Windows Server Core), see Headless configuration below — SFTP delivery can be configured entirely from the command line.

First launch: a desktop app, not a browser

Double-clicking the program opens a native application window, with a navigation menu along the left-hand side.

Home · Convert · Run History · Setup · Mapping · Help

"Who looks after this sync?"

The very first thing you'll see is a short question: "Who looks after this sync?", asking for one work email address. This isn't a login or an account — there's no password, and nothing is "unlocked" by answering. It exists purely so DistrictSync can recognize your district's email domain and pre-select the right district for you further into setup.

• If your address matches a district DistrictSync already supports, it tells you which one and lets you continue or correct it.
• If it doesn't recognize the domain, it says so calmly and lets you carry on — you'll pick your district yourself in a moment. You can also give your district number here: if DistrictSync ships a mapping for it, that district is offered to you; if not, you'll be able to set your district up yourself (see Setting up a district that isn't listed yet).
• If you're not the person who manages this — or would rather skip the question — there's a plain link to move on without answering ("I'm not the person who looks after this sync"). Nothing is saved either way.

You can add, change or remove this address later from Setup → Settings.

Setup: a 5-step wizard

After the initial question, DistrictSync walks you through a five-step setup wizard on the Setup screen:

1. Choose your district — pick your district from a dropdown. If your email domain was recognized in the first step, your district may already be selected for you (a suggestion you can change, never a silent default) — otherwise nothing is pre-picked. If your district isn't listed, press Set up my district to build its mapping yourself in a few short questions (see the next section), or contact SpacesEDU support to have one built for you.
2. Choose your folders — the input folder where your MyEd BC GDE files land, and the output folder DistrictSync writes the converted CSV files to.
3. Set up delivery — enter the SFTP details SpacesEDU provided (host, username, password, remote path) and test the connection. This step is optional and can be set up later.
4. Set a nightly schedule — turn on an automatic daily run and pick a time (03:00 is a good default, after your overnight MyEd BC export finishes). This step is also optional — if you only plan to run conversions by hand from the Convert screen, you can skip it. This step also has an optional seasonal pause: pick a start and end date once, and the sync stops over the summer break and resumes on its own each fall, every year, with nothing to renew. While paused, Home says so in green — it isn't a warning.
5. Finish — a summary of what was actually set up (and what you skipped, if anything, so you know what's left). Finishing here is the one thing that marks setup complete.

If you set up your own district in step 1, the wizard gains one extra step, Your files, between Folders and Delivery — described in the next section.

Turning on the nightly schedule shows one Windows permission prompt. Registering a task that can run whether or not you're logged in needs administrator rights, so Windows asks you to approve that one step — click Yes. You don't need to run the whole program as administrator, and if you never turn on the schedule (ad-hoc runs only), you won't see this prompt at all.

Once you finish the wizard, the Setup screen (the rail item still says "Setup") turns into a flat Settings page where you can review or change your folders, district, schedule and delivery settings at any time, with a single Save that updates everything — including re-registering the nightly task if something that affects it changed.

Setting up a district that isn't listed yet

DistrictSync ships ready-made mappings for many BC districts. If yours isn't one of them, you can set it up yourself, in the app, without waiting for a new release. The MyEd BC extract layout is the same from district to district; what differs is which files your district receives, what they're called, and which grades you roster — and those are the questions this setup asks.

Two ways in:

• During first-run setup, on the Choose your district step: Set up my district.
• On an installation that's already running, on the Mapping screen: Set up a district that isn't listed.

Four short questions:

1. Your starting point — the standard MyEd BC mapping closest to what your district sends: standard rostering (the five roster files), full myBlueprint+ (roster plus course files), core myBlueprint+ (students plus course files), or course files only. Everything you don't change is inherited from it — including fixes we ship to it in future versions.
2. Your district — district number, name and staff email domains. Typing the number fills in the name and domain for you; correct anything that's wrong. Nothing here is sent anywhere — it names your setup in the district list and lets the launch question recognize your colleagues' addresses.
3. Which files to produce — the CSV files DistrictSync should produce. Your starting point's usual set is pre-ticked.
4. Which grades — which grades are rostered at all, and which of those get one homeroom class instead of their timetable classes (typically the elementary grades). Or simply keep your starting point's grades.

Then, "Your files": one row for each MyEd BC file the mapping expects. If your district's file has a different name, pick it from the list of what's in your input folder or type it, then press Save these file names. Files the app can't see in the folder are listed plainly — a test carries on without them, and whatever they feed comes out empty.

Press Run a test conversion. It reads your real input folder, writes nothing and sends nothing, and shows how many rows each file would hold. If a column the mapping expects isn't in any of your files (usually a renamed header), it's listed under a heading that says the test still passed. When the counts look right, press Save district mapping — from then on this computer converts your district. Only after that can you continue to Delivery and Schedule.

Afterwards:

• Your district appears in every district list, marked Added on this computer.
• On Mapping, its card offers Edit mapping (which re-opens the same questions and Your files) and Show mapping file. Your whole mapping is one small text file, sd<number>custom_mapping.yaml, in the mappings folder inside DistrictSync's data folder in your user profile. Support may ask you for it. It survives upgrades.
• After you edit it, or after an update changes the standard mapping it builds on, DistrictSync asks for the test conversion again before the mapping can be re-activated or saved as your district. Nothing is changed behind your back.
• Discarding a mapping asks first, and is refused while it's the one this computer converts with — switch to another mapping first.

What it doesn't do: it doesn't change column names. If your district pre-processes its MyEd BC export and the column headers differ, the test conversion tells you which columns are missing — contact SpacesEDU support for a mapping built to your files. Having a mapping built for you remains available to every district.

The six screens

Home

A plain-language health check: is the sync working? A green banner means everything's fine, with the roster size for a quick sanity check. If something needs attention — a missing schedule, a failed run — Home names the problem in plain language and gives you a button to fix it. If setup hasn't been finished yet, Home shows the setup wizard itself instead of a dashboard.

Convert

Run a conversion by hand at any time — separate from any nightly schedule. Choose your district and input folder, click Convert now, and DistrictSync builds the CSV files into your configured output folder. If SFTP delivery is set up, you can send the files to SpacesEDU from here too, either right after a conversion or on their own from files already on disk. If a run's record counts drop sharply compared to the last one, Convert pauses and asks you to confirm before writing anything.

Run History

A read-only list of past runs — nightly, manual, and command-line — newest first, with plain-language status (not raw error text) and whether each run was delivered to SpacesEDU.

Setup

Covered above: the first-run wizard, then the ongoing Settings page for folders, district, schedule and delivery.

Mapping

Shows which district mapping is active and what it produces (which CSV files, from how many source files), and lets you switch to another — seeing what it would produce before you apply it. This is also where you set up a district that isn't listed and, for a mapping added on this computer, edit it, run its test conversion, and find its mapping file. The ready-made mappings that ship with DistrictSync can't be edited in the app — contact SpacesEDU support if one of those needs a change.

Help

Links out to the SpacesEDU Help Centre and a one-click "email support" button (with the version number and your district name pre-filled in the subject line, so support doesn't have to ask). Both the Help Centre link and the support address are also shown as plain, selectable text, in case the "open" buttons don't do anything on a locked-down server without a browser or mail client configured. If you've told DistrictSync who looks after the sync, that address is shown here too — it stays on this computer and isn't sent anywhere.

The MyEd BC files DistrictSync needs

DistrictSync reads the standard MyEducation BC General Data Extract (GDE) reports, dropped into your input folder as .txt files (tab- or comma-separated; .csv works too). Which ones you need depends on which output files your district produces.

Ask your MyEd BC administrator for these six reports — the Enhanced variant wherever one exists, because the Enhanced reports carry columns DistrictSync relies on (see Why the Enhanced reports below):

Three more, only for districts on the myBlueprint+ tier or syncing attendance:

• Which of them your district needs. Standard rostering needs the first five, with Class Information Enhanced strongly recommended (see below). Full myBlueprint+ adds the two course-history files. Core myBlueprint+ needs the demographic file plus Course Information and the two course-history files.
• The filename is your district's, not ours. The names above are the plain MyEd BC spellings the standard mapping looks for. Many districts receive the same reports under other names — StaffInformation.txt, studentcourseselection.txt, and, very commonly for the Enhanced reports, StudentDemographicEnhanced.txt and EmergencyContactInformationEnhanced.txt. That is normal and nothing needs renaming: a ready-made district mapping already knows your district's names, and a mapping you set up yourself lets you set them on the Your files step.
• Spelling matters, capitalization doesn't. DistrictSync finds your files whatever their case, so studentschedule.txt and StudentSchedule.txt both work. It won't guess at a genuinely different name — and if the name in your mapping isn't in the folder and two files there match it apart from case, the run stops and names them both rather than picking one.
• A missing file is logged and the outputs it feeds are skipped; the rest of the run continues. Home tells you when a run produced far fewer records than the last one.
• Why the Enhanced reports. Student Demographic Information Enhanced carries an enrollment-status column; the basic report doesn't, and without one DistrictSync falls back to the withdrawal date to decide who is still active — so former students with no withdrawal date can slip through as active. Class Information Enhanced carries the Primary Teacher column, which is how teachers who never appear in the student timetable (co-taught and modular programs) get their class enrollments. Without it, blended classes are still detected from the timetable, but those co-teachers are simply absent from Enrollments.csv. Emergency Contact Information Enhanced carries extra columns DistrictSync ignores, so either variant works for Family.csv — request it for consistency with the rest.
• Check the email addresses before your first sync. Email is the one field in these extracts SpacesEDU cannot work around, and a blank or mistyped one fails quietly — the run succeeds, the counts look plausible, and the person simply never appears. It is worth a look in MyEd BC now rather than a puzzled email in October.
• Family contacts are the strict case. A contact with no email address is not written to Family.csv at all, because SpacesEDU has no way to import one. So if guardian emails are blank in MyEd BC, sit in a field your extract doesn't include, or are entered on the wrong contact, those families are missing from SpacesEDU and nothing about the run will look wrong. A guardian's address is personal — it can't be derived from anything — so correcting it in MyEd BC is the only fix. The run log records how many contacts were left out, as a count only, which is the number to watch after your first sync.
• Students are the forgiving case. A student with no email address is still sent and still appears on the roster; they just can't be invited by email until one is added.
• No student emails in MyEd BC? They can often be generated. Where your students' addresses follow a predictable pattern — {student number}@yourdistrict.ca, or a first-name/surname combination — your mapping can build them from columns you already export, so the field doesn't have to be populated in MyEd BC at all. Several shipped district mappings already work this way. It has to be set up in the mapping rather than in the app, so email SpacesEDU support with the pattern your district uses and we'll build it into your configuration. The same trick can't rescue family contacts — there is no pattern for a guardian's personal address.

What gets produced

Every configuration produces some or all of these CSV files, depending on which are enabled for your district:

Most districts use the standard 5-file rostering set. Some also use the myBlueprint+ tier, which adds the two course files. Your district mapping (chosen during setup, or on the Mapping screen) decides which files your installation produces — your SpacesEDU/myBlueprint+ contact can tell you which tier your district is on.

How classes are built. Subject classes come from the timetable, one per section. For the grades your mapping marks as homeroom grades (typically elementary), students get one homeroom class from their demographic record instead of timetable classes. Where one teacher teaches two or more grades in the same slot, those sections are merged into a single blended class.

A few rules worth knowing. Only Active and PreReg students are sent; Inactive students — and, where a district has chosen to, grades outside its rostering range — are left out, along with their classes and enrollments. Family contacts with no email address are left out, because SpacesEDU can't import them; students with no email address are still sent but can't be invited by email. Both counts appear in the run log. Class names are capped at 100 characters. The files are written all-or-nothing — a run that fails partway never leaves a half-written set behind.

Delivery. When SFTP delivery is on, the five rostering CSVs are zipped into one dated file, districtsync_YYYY-MM-DD.zip, and CourseInfo.csv, StudentCourses.csv and StudentAttendance.csv are uploaded beside it as standalone files, because SpacesEDU imports those three individually. A course-only or attendance-only configuration produces no zip. Uploads can only go to SpacesEDU's own servers.

Running DistrictSync from the command line

For servers with no desktop, or for scripted/scheduled runs, DistrictSync also works entirely from the command line — the same program file, run with arguments:

DistrictSync-windows.exe --sis myedbc --input C:\DistrictSync\input --output C:\DistrictSync\output

Replace myedbc with your district's mapping name — for example sd48myedbc for a shipped district mapping, or sd<number>custom for one you set up yourself (its mapping file's name without _mapping.yaml) — and the folders as needed. Add --sftp to also deliver the files to SpacesEDU afterward, or --dry-run to preview the row counts without writing any files. See Headless configuration below for configuring SFTP credentials entirely by command line (no desktop app needed), and Troubleshooting for what each exit code means.

Getting help

If something isn't working as expected:

1. Check the Home screen first — it names the problem in plain language when something needs attention.
2. Check Troubleshooting below for common issues.
3. Open Help in the app, or email hello@spacesedu.com — include the version number shown on the Help screen, and if you set up your own district, the mapping file from Show mapping file.

Updated on: 15/09/2026