Identify Student

The Identify Student service provides a means to perform a search against the full set of students contained within the PASI Core. Given a set of search criteria, PASI will perform a search and return a subset of information for the matching students.

Security

The service can be accessed by systems with the PASI Client System Role.

K-12 Organization Client

Request Information

The Identify Student Request contains the set of information that PASI will use as search criteria. The following information can be used to perform the search.

  • Caller Reason Code
  • Include All Quality Levels
  • Include Student With Disclosure Restriction
  • Student Locator
    • Extended Student Criteria
    • Age Criteria
      • Approximate Age
      • Birth Date
      • Grade Level
    • Name Criteria
      • First Name
      • Last Name
      • Middle Name
      • Suffix Name
    • Address Criteria
      • Student Address Street
      • Student Address City
      • Student Address Province
      • Student Address Postal Code
      • Student Address Country

Additional Information Regarding Request Attributes

Caller Reason CodeThe reason that the request to Identify Student is being made. Currently, the only valid reason is Student Enrolment.
Include All Quality LevelsThis indicates that even if Exact Matches would be found, the search results should include the best matches across all quality levels.
Include Students with Disclosure RestrictionsThis indicates that the search results should contain information for students whose information includes Information Disclosure Restrictions.
Student Provincial IDAny student that matches the provided ASN will be included in the search results.
Extended Student CriteriaWhen using the extended student criteria, then the following must be included:
- at least one of the Age Critiera,
- at least first name and last name of the Name Criteria

Additional Notes:

  • The search based on student name will require both a ‘First Name’ and a ‘Last Name’. The ‘First Name’ can be as little as an initial, however the ‘Last Name’ must be provided in full.
  • The student name provided will be compared against all known student names within PASI Core.
  • Student Approximate Age - This can be used instead of the student birth date if it is unknown or is unreliable.
  • Student Grade - If neither the Student Birth Date nor Approximate Age have been provided, the Grade Code will be used to estimate a student’s age.
  • Secondary ASN in Results - If a Secondary ASN is added to the results because it matches the search criteria then PASI will ensure that the Primary ASN is added as well. The Primary ASN could be still be filtered out based on the other “Include” flags.

PASI Client Requirements

In order to use this service, the PASI Client must:

  1. Ensure that the use of the service within their product is consistent with the Reason provided as part of the Identify Student Request.
  2. Ensure that a request using the ‘Include All Quality Levels’ or the ‘Include Students with Disclosure Restrictions’ option is not the default behavior of the system. These options must only be used as a subsequent request when the student being search for was not contained within the search results.
  3. Ensure that before this service is called using the ‘Include All Quality Levels’ option, that the end user of the product is aware that their actions will be recorded for auditing purposes.
  4. Ensure that before this service is called using the ‘Include Students with Disclosure Restrictions’ option, that the end user of the product is aware that the information they are about to request is considered sensitive and that their actions will be recorded for auditing purposes. The PASI Team will be providing detailed requirements related to the use of the ‘Include Students with Disclosure Restrictions’ option, outlining user interface requirements and functionality that must be established within the PASI Client system.

Request Validations

There are no validation rules applied by this service.

Service Functionality

The Identify Student service uses a PASI search algorithm which performs searches on several types of matches such as exact match, phonetic match, partial name match and alternate name match. Further details on the search operation can be found here.

The information provided as part of the request will be used by PASI to search for the student. The search results returned by PASI will fit into one of three quality levels:

High QualityIndicates that the Student Name, Student Birth Date, and ASN (if provided) in the search criteria exactly match the information contained within the PASI Core for the student.
Medium QualityIndicates that the Student Name, Student Birth Date, and ASN (if provided) in the search criteria are consistent with the information contained within the PASI Core for the student, but not necessarily the same. For example, if a search for ‘J Doe’ was performed, then ‘John Doe’ would be a Medium Quality match.
Low QualityIndicates that the Student Name, Student Age, and/or ASN (if provided) in the search criteria are close to the information contained within the PASI Core, but are inconsistent. This implies that the information contained within the search criteria is not accurate, or information contained within the PASI Core is not accurate. For example, a search for ‘J Smith’ would be considered a low quality match against ‘J Smythe’ as the information is close, but is inconsistent.

By default, PASI will only return results from the highest quality level found. This means that if any High Quality matches were found, Medium Quality and Low Quality matches would not be returned. If no High Quality matches were found, then only Medium Quality matches would be returned. And if no High or Medium Quality matches were found, then the Low Quality matches would be returned.

By default, only student records with valid ASNs will be returned. This can be changed by using the Quality Level Filter outlined below.

Note: For 2018 and older end points, the Student School Enrolment information will be updated using the following mapping and then returned as part of the Response Information:

Match Techniques

When search results are returned, each record returned will include a Search Rank, indicating how well the returned student matches against the search criteria. PASI will use a variety of matching techniques to calculate this rank.

TechniqueDescriptionApplies To
Exact MatchThis technique will only be deemed a successful match if the search criteria matches the student information exactly.All Search Types
Partial MatchThis technique will be deemed a successful match if the student information starts with the search criteria provided. The specifics of the partial search vary based on the type of search.Search by Student Name, Student Birth Date, Student Address (Postal Code)
Sounds LikeThis technique will be deemed a successful match if the student information sounds like the search criteria provided.Search by Student Name
TranspositionThis technique will be deemed a successful match if the student information would match the search criteria if the information in the search criteria were transposed.Search by Student Name
Close / TypoThis technique will be deemed a successful match if the student information is close to the search criteria provided but does not fall into the other categories. This is to accommodate typos in the search criteria, or typos that have been previously captured and stored within PASI.Student Age

Other techniques specific to a particular search criteria may also be used, with the ultimate goal of finding the right student.

Based on the student search ranking, PASI will return the students that have the highest matching score, however some constraints have been added to the Identify Student service to ensure that the privacy of other students is protected

Students with Information Disclosure Restrictions

By default, search results will not include students whose information should not be disclosed as per the typical disclosure rules, and the Match Status will return a status of Student With Disclosure Restriction. As a subsequent request, a software product can request that a search be repeated with these students included in the results. Making this call requires that the software product ensures that the end user is aware that the information they are about to request is deemed sensitive and that access to this information is being audited.

Maximum Results

A maximum of 20 students will be returned. This means that if the search results in more than 20 students that are equally scored, then no search results will be provided with the expectation that the search criteria needs to be refined (see the Insufficient match student status below).

Quality Level Filter

If the student being sought is not included in the best quality level (High or Medium) a subsequent call can be made with the option to ‘Include All Quality Levels’. This returns the best matches across all quality levels based on the matching score.

When this option is used, the student records contained in the High Quality level will generally remain at the top of the list (as their score will be better than matches in the Medium and Low Quality Levels). However, because the Quality level is based solely on Student Name and Student Age search criteria, it is possible (based on the additional search criteria) that a Medium Quality match could score higher than a High Quality match, and a Low Quality match could score higher than a Medium Quality match.

In addition, Deactivated ASNs are normally excluded from the search results, however, when using this option, they will be included.

Limited Access School/Authority Restrictions

For a student to be returned by Identify Student for a Limited Access School/Authority, the student must have one of the following:

Student Address Criteria

The following Student Address restriction applies:

  • 2019 Endpoint and onwards: No Restriction. Both student's Mailing and Physical addresses are included as part of search criteria.
  • 2018 Endpoint and prior: Student Physical addresses are excluded. Only the Student mailing address are considered as part of search criteria.

Response Information

Contains limited information about the students found during the search. This information includes: legal name(s), aliases, partial address(es), birth date, and some enrolment information. This information will be organized into the different quality levels as described in the detailed section on devnet.

The following information is returned after a successful request has been processed:

  • Search Match Status
  • A list of students that had High Quality Matches
  • A list of students that had Medium Quality Matches
  • A list of students that had Low Quality Matches

On the 2018 end point, the following information about each matched Student that is returned by the search:

On the 2019 end point and later, the following information about each matched Student that is returned by the search:

* School Enrolments returned are limited to enrolments in Future School Years, the Current School Year, and the last 2 calendar years. All Enrolments for Future and Current school years will be included. Only the 2 most recent enrolments from the last 2 calendar years will be included.

Match Status

The search results includes a status. The status may be one of the following:

Match StatusDescription
No MatchThis status indicates no students were found; the results does not include any students.
MatchThis status indicates exactly one student was found; the results contain one student
AmbiguousThis status indicates more than one student was found; the results contain multiple students.
FoundStudentWithDisclosureRestrictionThis status indicates the search found students that have disclosure restriction; whether those students are returned in the results is determined by the IncludeStudentWithDisclosureRestriction property. If the IncludeStudentWithDisclosureRestriction property is set to true then the results will contain at least one student that has active disclosure restriction otherwise the results will not contain any. If the search found one or more students that have disclosure restriction, this status will be returned instead of Match or Ambiguous.
InsufficientThis status indicates too many matches were found and the matches were essentially indistinguishable in terms of importance from each other. In this case no students are returned.
1)
Student's Physical Addresses are excluded
2)
Both Student's Mailing and Physical addresses are included