Niche Integration

Every year, over 50 million people use Niche to find the right school for them. Niche has in-depth profiles on all U.S. colleges, universities, and K-12 schools including millions of student reviews, comprehensive rankings, and detailed statistics. Students and families use Niche throughout the admissions process, and Niche helps connect schools with these highly engaged users when they are actively researching. This documentation outlines the necessary steps to configure the process of receiving leads from Niche within Slate.

Once configured, this integration allows Niche to automatically deliver lead and prospect data to your institution's SFTP directory.  In order to provide Niche with access to do this, there are three standard resources that must be added to your database: the Niche service account and the Niche Leads and Niche Prospects source formats. The steps to configure these items are provided in the Slate Configurations section below.

Step 1: Niche delivery setup

Niche must configure your account to receive the lead data. To begin the process to configure lead delivery with Niche:

1. Submit their Lead Delivery Setup form.

2. One of the questions on the form requests the subdomain for your Slate instance. The subdomain is the portion of the web address that you use to connect to Slate before the /manage, for example, if you access Slate through the URL: https://apply.slateuniversity.edu/manage, then your institution's subdomain is apply.slateuniversity.edu.
   

3. Submit the form.

A Niche Implementation Specialist will reach out for any additional information needed and to confirm the setup.

Step 2: Adding the Niche service account

This user account is configured to have access to the SFTP directories: /incoming/niche/ (where files will be dropped off) and /incoming/processed/niche/ (where files are moved once they are processed by Slate).

1. Go to Database → Slate Template Library.

2. Add the Niche Service Account under the Users section.

   This user account has all of the necessary configurations for Niche to be able to deliver files, so no changes should be made to this user account.

3. Select refresh the Slate Template Library.

Step 3: Adding the Niche user ID field

Niche sends an unique ID in its data files that can be used for matching purposes on both sides of the integration. Use the following steps to create this custom, unique for merging field:

1. Go to Database → Fields.

2. Select New Field.

3. Configure the following settings:

   • Scope: Person

   • Value: Store Value

   • ID: niche_user_id

   • Name: Niche User ID

   • Field Type: Free Text

   • Unique for Merging: Value contains a unique ID which identifies a single record for merging.

     

4. Select Save.

Step 4: Adding the Niche source formats

You must add two source formats to your database:

Niche Lead Delivery

The Source Format will automatically pick up CSV files delivered to the /incoming/niche/ SFTP directory.

1. Go to Database → Source Format Library.

2. Add the Niche Lead Delivery (CSV) Source Format.

3. Configure the Remap settings once a file has been uploaded. Many standard items have been pre-mapped. As always, feel free to customize how the data will be imported.

4. Set the Remap Active flag to Active on the source format once you are finished mapping the Source Format. This will run the import using the Remap settings configured in the step above for all files uploaded on or after the Remap As Of Date value.

Niche Prospects

The Source Format will automatically pick up CSV files delivered to the /incoming/niche/niche_prospects/ SFTP directory.

1. Go to Database → Source Format Library.

2. Add the Niche Prospects (CSV) Source Format.

3. Configure the Remap settings once a file has been uploaded. Many standard items have been pre-mapped. As always, feel free to customize how the data will be imported.

4. Set the Remap Active flag to Active on the source format once you are finished mapping the Source Format. This will run the import using the Remap settings configured in the step above for all files uploaded on or after the Remap As Of Date value.

5. Several fields have been pre-mapped for convenience, but please adjust these mappings as needed. Confirm and customize any destination field settings as desired

   Note: Be sure to map the NicheUserUUID source field to the Niche User ID custom field that you created in the previous step.