Overview
August Schools pulls contacts from Veracross through two separate paths: general contacts (parents and guardians) and emergency contacts. They come from different places in Veracross, follow different rules, and can behave differently when something is missing. Understanding which path a contact takes is the fastest way to explain why it did or didn't sync.
This article walks admins through how each path works, which fields carry over, and the most common reasons a contact doesn't show up.
Why this matters
Faster troubleshooting: knowing which path a contact takes tells you where to look when it's missing
Cleaner data: understanding the requirements helps you fix the source record in Veracross instead of guessing
Fewer surprises: the two paths handle cleanup differently, so knowing the distinction prevents confusion when a contact partially disappears
Part 1: General contacts (parents and guardians)
General contacts sync in a specific order: students first, then parents, then relationships. Each stage depends on the one before it.
Step 1: The parent record creates the person
August Schools first pulls the parent list from Veracross and creates a person for each one.
Each parent row must have a Veracross ID.
The parent's roles come from Veracross as a list (for example, "Parent, Grandparent") and are matched to August Schools roles through a role mapping.
Role mapping in August. Veracross roles are mapped to internal August roles. And the parents are synced with these internal August roles. If a parent in Veracross has a valid role in the SIS but the parent is missing in August, oftentimes, the mappings are not updated in August. However, if the parent has a past role in the SIS, then they will be inactive and invisible in August.
Step 2: The relationship creates the contact link
Once people exist, August pulls relationships from Veracross and uses them to connect each parent to a student as a contact.
A relationship is only turned into a contact when all of the following are true:
The student exists in August Schools and is active.
The related person was created in Step 1 and has at least one active role.
The relationship type is not Sibling. (Siblings are handled as sibling links, not contacts.)
When those conditions are met, the Veracross relationship type is matched to an August Schools contact type through your relationship mapping. Anything without a specific match becomes an "other relation."
The following contact flags carry over from Veracross:
Veracross field | August Schools flag |
Emergency | Emergency contact |
Pick up | Pick up |
Legal custody | Legal custody |
Medical notification | Medical notification |
Resident | Shared household |
Parent portal access | Parental access |
Receive invoices | Tuition responsible |
Receive general correspondence | General contact |
Common reasons a parent or guardian contact doesn't sync
The student is inactive in August Schools.
The parent person was never created, because they weren't in the Veracross parent list or none of their roles could be mapped.
Unmapped roles: This happens if the relationship is not a direct name (eg. parent, grandparent, etc) and has a complex name (eg. parent of child, grandparent of Adam, etc).
The parent person exists but has no active roles in the SIS.
The Veracross relationship type is Sibling, so it's routed to sibling links instead of contacts.
Part 2: Emergency contacts
Emergency contacts come through a completely separate feed and follow their own rules.
They pull from the Veracross emergency contacts list, independent of the parent sync. This feed does not depend on the parent step running first.
Each row needs a contact ID and a student ID.
With each run, August Schools creates the emergency contact and link them to the student.
The emergency contact flag is always set to true.
Pick up and medical notification also carry over.
Emergency contacts intentionally do not carry over these flags: legal custody, parental access, tuition responsible, general contact, and shared household.
A few things to keep in mind:
The contact's role is derived from the Veracross relationship text. Unmatched values are kept as a role rather than dropped, so an unusual relationship label still results in a role.
The generic label "Emergency Contact" is not currently in the role mapping table, so it will not produce a named role on its own.
The student must already exist in August Schools when this feed runs. The person for the emergency contact is created in the same pass, but the student is not.
How cleanup differs between the two paths
The two paths remove contacts differently, which is worth knowing when a contact partially disappears.
General contacts: when a contact is removed from the Veracross relationship payload, it's disabled in August Schools.
Emergency contacts: when a contact is removed from the emergency feed, only the emergency contact flag is cleared. The contact is not fully disabled in August if the contact still has other roles that are current or they are coming from a different scope.
Part 3: Contact info enrichment
Phone numbers and addresses are handled by a separate enrichment step that runs after students, parents, and staff or faculty have synced. This step updates existing people rather than creating new ones.
Phone numbers sync whenever they're present.
An address only syncs when the street, city, state or subdivision, and postal code are all present. If any of those four is missing, the address is skipped.
The key distinction
The clearest way to keep the two paths straight:
| General contacts | Emergency contacts |
Source | Relationships feed | Emergency contacts feed |
Creates the person? | No (needs the parent sync first) | Yes (created inline) |
Person must have an active role? | Yes | No |
Emergency contact flag | Comes from the Veracross emergency field | Always set to true |
One person can appear in both paths. For example, a parent might come through as a general contact via the relationships feed and separately as an emergency contact via the emergency contacts feed. Both records are expected and can coexist.