Import and Manage Student Rosters

Students are the core data in Shibutz. Each student has a name, gender, behavioral scales, optional flags, free-text notes, and friend requests. The more accurate your student data, the better the algorithm can balance your classrooms.

Adding Students Manually

To add a student, open your placement workspace from the dashboard and click Add Student. If the roster is empty, the student list also shows Add Student and Import Students actions so you can start from the empty state without searching the page header.

You'll need to provide:

• Name — The student's full name.
• Gender — Male, Female, or Other in both the add form and student editor. Import also accepts these three values. Other counts toward roster and classroom totals, but not the male/female counts used for the boy/girl difference check.

After creating the student, you can fill in the remaining attributes described below.

Free workspaces include up to 25 students. When the roster reaches that limit, Shibutz keeps the existing students editable and shows an upgrade prompt before you add or import more students.

Reviewing and Filtering the Roster

The student list includes a Roster review panel above the table. Use it to search by name, school, notes, or friend request, then narrow the roster by gender or sending school before you generate a placement.

Review queues group students by the work they need next:

• Cleanup needed — duplicate names, unknown scales, or broken friend links.
• Support context — students with support needs or notes that staff should read before final placement.
• Friend requests — students with requested peers to double-check before running the algorithm.
• Scale review — any student with High need, Watch, or Needs review scale values.

You can select visible rows from any filtered view and use bulk cleanup actions to clear selected notes, clear selected friend requests, or delete selected students. Deleting students also cleans up their related preferences, restrictions, required placements, and friend links so the roster stays internally consistent.

Student Attributes

Each student can be rated on four scales. The app displays these as placement-planning labels:

• Low need — No concerns. The student is performing well in this area.
• Watch — Some concerns. The student may need moderate support.
• High need — Significant concerns. The student needs substantial support.

The Four Scales

• Social — How the student interacts with peers. Consider cooperation, conflict resolution, and social skills.
• Emotional — Emotional regulation and wellbeing. Consider anxiety levels, resilience, and self-confidence.
• Behavioral — Classroom behavior. Consider attentiveness, rule-following, and impulse control.
• Learning — Academic performance. Consider reading level, math skills, and overall academic engagement.

These ratings help the engine balance support profiles. They do not guarantee an identical mix in every classroom. See How the Algorithm Works for details on scale balancing.

Support Needs

You can flag a student as having support needs. The flag is sent with the roster and appears in classroom statistics. It does not describe the amount or type of support required; staff still need to check placements against the support each classroom can provide.

Notes

Each student has an optional free-text Notes field for brief context needed by authorized placement staff. Include only what is necessary for the placement decision, such as "Review transition support with the coordinator." Do not copy medical histories, family records, or detailed case notes into the roster.

Notes are saved with the roster, sent to the placement service when you generate, and visible in saved results. Do not treat them as a private message or a placement rule. Use Restrictions or Required Placements for placement requirements. Check notes and every sheet in an exported workbook before sharing; follow your school's authorized access, storage, and retention procedures.

Friend Requests

Each student can request up to three friends. A friend request means the student would like to be placed in the same classroom as the selected peer.

• Friend requests are one-directional — if Student A requests Student B, it does not automatically mean Student B requested Student A.
• The algorithm tries to honor as many friend requests as possible, but restrictions, required placements, configured capacities, and the boy/girl difference limit take priority. Scale balance is a balancing goal, not a user-configured hard threshold.
• Friend requests are different from teacher-set preferences. Friend requests are typically gathered from student surveys, while preferences are set by teachers or administrators.

Add or change these requests in the student's inline editor on Students, then click Save Changes. The separate Preferences section records staff pairs and does not populate the student's friend list.

Importing Students from CSV or Excel

If you already have a student roster in a spreadsheet, you can import it directly instead of entering each student manually. Shibutz accepts both .xlsx and .csv files.

Template Format

Download the import template from the student list page. The same columns should be used whether you upload the Excel template or save it as CSV:

• Full Name — Student's full name (required).
• External ID — An optional student identifier from your SIS, such as a student number or state ID. Common header names like Student ID, Student Number, SIS ID, and State ID are detected automatically. When present, Shibutz uses it to recognize the same student on a later re-import.
• Gender — male, female, or other. M and F are also accepted, as are boy and girl. Rows with blank or unsupported gender values are flagged in the preview and must be fixed before import.
• Behavior — green, yellow, or red (optional). Green maps to Low need, yellow maps to Watch, and red maps to High need. Blank values default to green; unsupported values are flagged in the preview before import.
• Emotion — green, yellow, or red (optional). Blank values default to green; unsupported values are flagged in the preview before import.
• Social — green, yellow, or red (optional). Blank values default to green; unsupported values are flagged in the preview before import.
• Learning — green, yellow, or red (optional). Blank values default to green; unsupported values are flagged in the preview before import.
• ADHD — yes or no (optional, defaults to no). This maps to the support needs flag.
• Friend 1, Friend 2, and Friend 3 — Optional friend request names. Use the same spelling as the student's full name. Each row keeps its own requests, even when students share a name. If a requested name matches multiple rows, import is blocked rather than choosing a student. External IDs do not disambiguate friend names. Use distinct full names in both the student and friend cells, or clear the ambiguous request and add it in that student's editor on Students after import. Resolving a duplicate does not clear this diagnostic.
• School — The student's current or sending school (optional).
• Notes — Free text for any additional context about the student (optional).

You can also import the Students sheet from a Shibutz placement export. Shibutz reads the student fields by column header, so export-only columns such as Class and Friends Count are ignored when you reimport the roster into a new workspace.

Excel formulas use their saved results; Shibutz does not calculate formulas. Rich text and hyperlink labels are read as text, numbers and booleans as values, and dates as ISO timestamps. Store identifiers with leading zeros as text. If a formula has no saved result, a cell contains an Excel error, or its value is unsupported, the error names the worksheet and cell. Correct that cell (or recalculate and save the workbook in Excel), then upload it again.

If your school exports the same roster layout every time, save the column mapping as a preset during import. Adjust which source column maps to each student field in the preview, then save the preset with your account and load it later so student name, gender, school, support needs, notes, and friend requests land in the same Shibutz fields again.

SIS export guides

Shibutz does not connect directly to your SIS. Export a spreadsheet from your SIS first, then upload that CSV or Excel file from the Import Students dialog. Extra SIS columns are fine; Shibutz imports the columns you map to student fields and ignores the rest.

Imports follow the same plan limit as manual entry: Free users can import only up to the remaining slots in a 25-student roster, while Pro users can import larger rosters.

After choosing a file, review the preview inside the Import Students dialog before saving it. If something looks wrong, choose a different file, load a saved mapping preset, or upload the corrected spreadsheet.

After import, review scales and necessary support notes on Students. Add student friend requests in the student editor, and use Preferences for separate staff pairing decisions. Check your classroom structure, and then move to Generating Placements.

Re-importing and Duplicate Handling

Rosters change between March planning and the first day of school, so most schools import the same list more than once. Shibutz checks each uploaded row against the existing roster and earlier rows in the same file before saving. Review the matches and summary; changed identifiers or incomplete matching details can still prevent a duplicate from being recognized.

Shibutz looks for two kinds of match:

• Same external ID — When both the import row and an existing student carry the same External ID, that is treated as a confident match on the same person, even if the name was edited.
• Same name, school, and gender — When a row has no external ID, Shibutz falls back to matching on a normalized full name together with the same school and gender.

Any matches appear in a possible duplicates panel in the preview, with the imported values shown next to the values already on the roster so you can see the evidence. For each one you choose:

• Update existing — Refresh supplied fields, preserve omitted fields, and keep the existing student ID and linked staff rules. Imported friend links are merged with existing friend links. This is not a way to clear an old friend list.
• Skip (keep existing) — Leave the existing student untouched and ignore the imported row.
• Add as new — Deliberately create a separate student, for the rare case where two different people really do share the same details.

A single external-ID match to an existing roster record defaults to Update existing. Name, school, and gender matches, duplicates within the file, and multiple rows targeting one existing identity start without a default. Review the evidence before choosing. Use Apply to all duplicates to resolve every match at once, or set each one individually. The import stays blocked until every possible duplicate has a decision.

Before saving, the import summary shows the planned outcome: how many students were parsed, how many are new, updated, or skipped, how many duplicates still need a decision, plus a gender breakdown, school breakdown, and support-needs total. Rosters without external IDs still work exactly as before — the quick spreadsheet flow is unchanged.

Import Tips

• Include an External ID column when your SIS provides one. It makes repeat imports match the right student even if a name changes.
• Make sure names are spelled consistently — without an external ID, matching relies on the name, school, and gender lining up.
• The file must be in .xlsx or .csv format. CSV files can include quoted values, commas inside names, and multi-line notes.
• Existing students are never overwritten silently. Any changes to a current student happen only when you choose Update existing for a detected duplicate.

Editing and Deleting Students

Use the student's Edit button to open the inline editor. From there you can:

• Update their name, gender, or scales.
• Add or remove friend requests.
• Toggle the support needs flag.
• Add or edit notes for the student.
• Delete the student entirely. This also removes them from any friend requests, preferences, or restrictions they were part of.

Click Save Changes and wait for confirmation. The editor stays open if saving fails, keeping your changes ready to retry. Editing and Cancel are disabled while a save is in progress. Use Cancel when you want to discard an unsaved draft.

If the workspace changed elsewhere, reload the saved data and review your draft before saving again. If the student disappears after a failed addition or reload, the editor keeps your draft visible but disables saving. Choose Cancel to return to the roster, then add the student again if needed.

Tips for Accurate Data

• Involve the teaching team — Teachers who know the students best should rate the four scales. Counselors and specialists can help with support needs flags.
• Gather friend requests early — Run a simple survey asking each student to name up to three friends they'd like to be with next year.
• Review before generating — Double-check that all students are accounted for and scales look reasonable. It's much easier to fix data before generating than after.
• Keep it honest — The algorithm only works as well as the data it receives. Inflating or deflating scales undermines the balancing process.