API keys

Additional Module

The Insight API is a tool used to extract data from Insight for use in other applications. The API is an additional module in Insight.

After the Insight API has been purchased, you will need to enable it via the service controller. Run the service controller on the IIS server that hosts Insight. In the window you will see a checkbox for "enable unsecured API". This needs to be ticked before the API will work.

Once the API is enabled, you can view a list of the operations it is able to perform by appending /insightapi.aspx?op=list to your Insight URL. For example, if the URL to access Insight was https://schoolwebsite/INSIGHT the URL to view the API operations would be https://schoolwebsite/INSIGHT/insightapi?op=list

This will show you a list of the valid operations. You can click on each of the operations and the browser's address bar will show you the URL that you need to use to extract the relevant data. The URL would be something like: https://schoolwebsite/INSIGHT/insightapi.aspx?op=behaviourpoints

However this is not complete, you also need to append a string of text that tells Insight which pupil's data you wish to retrieve. You can use one of the following below:

&unsecuredpupilid=XXXX where you replace XXXX with the pupil's ID number from SIMS
&unsecuredpupilupn=YYYYYY where you replace YYYYYY with the pupil's UPN number
&unsecuredpupiladno=ZZZZZZ where you replace ZZZZZZ with the pupil's admission number

For example, a complete URL could be: https://schoolwebsite/INSIGHT/insightapi.aspx?op=behaviourpoints&unsecuredpupilid=1234

You must use IPsec in conjunction with the Insight API. The URL links are not password protected and if you do not use IPsec, anybody could access sensitive information about pupils at school if they guess the correct fields.