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Student lifecycle (inquiry → alumni)
EDA-based configuration covering inquiry, application, enrollment, course connections, and alumni. Every stage tracked against retention and outcomes, not just stage progression.
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Enterprise Platforms × Education & EdTech
Salesforce Education Cloud, Education Data Architecture (EDA), and Experience Cloud implementations for K-12 districts, higher ed institutions, and EdTech operators, student lifecycle done right with FERPA-aligned configurations and the SIS-integration boundary as primary scope.
The problem
Higher ed and K-12 buyers come to Salesforce with a clear ask: track the student lifecycle from inquiry through application, enrollment, retention, alumni, and the parent / household / community relationships around it. The pattern that fails them is partner work that crams the lifecycle into Sales Cloud's lead → opportunity → account model and then bolts custom objects on top.
EDA (Education Data Architecture) is the right starting point: it ships with Affiliations, Course Connection, and Household models that fit the domain. We configure EDA as the foundation, integrate the SIS (OneRoster, district SIS APIs), wire the Experience Cloud portals students and parents actually use, and stand up the FERPA-aligned audit boundary.
Where it ships
Concrete applications where enterprise platforms unlocks measurable value inside education & edtech delivery constraints.
EDA-based configuration covering inquiry, application, enrollment, course connections, and alumni. Every stage tracked against retention and outcomes, not just stage progression.
−9 hr/wk
registrar manual reconciliation
OneRoster for K-12; institutional SIS APIs (Banner, Workday Student, Colleague) for higher ed. Student, course, term, and grade records as the integration spine. Idempotent, conflict-resolved, audit-grade.
Enrollment-cycle CRM tuned for the long admissions cycle: campus visits, application checkpoints, FA / FAFSA tracking, and yield modeling. Marketing Cloud for nurture campaigns with FERPA-bounded segmentation.
Service Cloud + custom Lightning for advisor caseloads, intervention tracking, and at-risk flags. Integrated with LMS (Canvas, Brightspace, Schoology) for the engagement signals advisors need.
Experience Cloud portals for parents (K-12) and students / parents (higher ed). Document upload, milestone visibility, communication threads. Bounded by FERPA consent and minor-protection rules.
How we engage
Each phase has a deliverable, an owner, and an acceptance criterion calibrated to education & edtech delivery.
Two-week discovery: student lifecycle map, SIS interface surface, identity model, FERPA / COPPA boundary, parent / household relationships. Output is honest fit recommendation including 'EDA fits this' vs. 'use a different platform here'.
EDA as the data-model foundation; standard Lightning where the use case fits; custom objects only where EDA can't be extended. Affiliations and Course Connections wired before custom work.
OneRoster (K-12) or institutional SIS APIs (higher ed) with idempotent transformation pipelines. LMS integration through standard connectors (Canvas, Brightspace) or LTI for the long tail. Latency, ordering, and re-sync semantics designed before configuration.
FERPA evidence package, parent-consent flows for minors, audit-log retention configured per institution policy. Adoption discipline through faculty / advisor training, in-app guidance, and the registrar-led cutover plan.
Capabilities
Stack
Compliance overlay
Every education & edtech engagement carries the evidence collection that procurement and audit teams expect on day one.
Education record classification at the field level; consent capture for disclosure; audit-log retention per institution policy. Evidence package shipped with go-live.
Minor-protection rules in EDA; parent-consent flows for under-13 records; restricted marketing fields and consent-bounded segmentation.
OneRoster v1.1 / v1.2 for student / class / enrollment / grade records. Conflict-resolution rules documented and tested. Roster refresh cadence aligned to district calendars.
Selected work
Where this fits
Common questions
EDA is the open-source data architecture (free, community-supported). Education Cloud is the licensed product that builds on top. For most K-12 and higher-ed engagements we start with EDA: it's mature, well-supported, and avoids licensing complexity. Move to Education Cloud when the institution needs the licensed analytics, advising, or recruitment apps that ship with it.
Yes: all three are common SIS integrations. Banner uses ETHOS APIs; Workday Student uses RaaS / Cloud Connect; Colleague uses the Web API or ETOS. We build idempotent transformation pipelines with explicit conflict resolution and error routing. No nightly batch jobs that silently lose records.
FERPA-defensible Salesforce orgs are about the configuration and evidence package, not the platform. We configure record classifications, consent capture, audit-log retention, and disclosure-tracking flows, then ship the evidence package an institutional auditor accepts. Salesforce's underlying infrastructure is FERPA-eligible; the implementation has to follow.
Higher ed (single institution): EDA + Banner integration + recruitment-cycle CRM in 6–10 months. K-12 district: OneRoster + parent portals + advising in 4–7 months. Multi-campus systems with consolidated EDA: 9–14 months phased. Programs that try to compress further usually descope SIS integration. We don't recommend that.
Discovery + assessment: 2 weeks, $30K–$70K. EDA + Sales / Service Cloud implementation: 5–8 months, $300K–$800K. SIS integration (Banner / Workday Student / Colleague): +2–4 months, $150K–$400K. Marketing Cloud / Pardot: +2–4 months, $120K–$300K. Managed services post-launch: $15K–$60K monthly retainer.
Yes: those go through our Custom Software practice (FORGE), with Salesforce as a likely customer-facing layer but not the whole stack. The engagement starts with what should sit on Salesforce vs. custom and what should integrate to existing SISs / LMSs.
Talk to us
A senior engineer plus the ATLAS department lead joins the first call, both with prior education & edtech delivery experience.