The PowerSchool integration verifies students, staff, and guardians across enrollment, provisioning, and sensitive portal workflows. It supports API, OIDC, and SAML paths to write IAL2 status back to PowerSchool custom fields.
Integration type
SIS (Student Info System)
What we solve
PowerSchool districts need a secure way to verify the identity of students, staff, and guardians—especially for enrollment, staff provisioning, and sensitive guardian portal actions—across deployments that may lack consistent webhook support. This integration uses a PowerSchool plugin to authenticate via OAuth client credentials, detect new enrollments via polling or event subscriptions, trigger 1Kosmos identity proofing (OIDC for staff; SAML step-up for guardian portal), and write IAL2 verification status back to PowerSchool custom fields so districts can reduce fraud, protect student data, and meet KYC/assurance requirements for high-risk actions.
Integration architecture
PowerSchool integrations are packaged as plugins — signed ZIP archives deployed into the PowerSchool server. The plugin registers OAuth credentials and optional webhook endpoints.
API authentication
Returns a bearer token valid for 3,600 seconds.
Touchpoint 1 — New student enrollment trigger PowerSchool does not natively support outbound webhooks in all deployment tiers. For schools on PowerSchool SIS Cloud (SaaS), the 1Kosmos plugin registers a Data Access Tag (DAT) page that polls for newly enrolled students:
For schools where webhooks are available, the plugin registers an event subscription.
Touchpoint 2 — Identity proofing trigger for staff/high-value actions PowerSchool implements OneRoster 1.1 for roster data. Staff records are accessible via:
For staff onboarding, the plugin reads new staff records and triggers IDV via the 1Kosmos OIDC flow. Results are written back to a custom PowerSchool extension field.
Touchpoint 3 — Parent/guardian KYC PowerSchool's Guardian Portal (web) uses SAML 2.0 for SSO. 1Kosmos acts as a SAML IdP. When a guardian registers a new account or updates financial information, the portal can enforce step-up authentication via a SAML AuthnContext of urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:ac:classes:MobileTwoFactorContract mapped to 1Kosmos IAL2.
Data flow
Integration complexity: Medium-High
The plugin framework is well-documented but requires validation through PowerSchool's partner program. Schools on legacy on-premise deployments have limited webhook support, requiring polling-based architectures.
