The ARK Class ID lets you automatically assign students to the correct class when you import your student file. This article explains what it is, who should use it, and how to add it to your import file.

The ARK Class ID is optional. It's built for high schools or any large school with 3+ sections per grade, where manually assigning hundreds of students to the right class period would take would be tedious and time consuming. If your school is small, with two or fewer class sections, skip this feature entirely. Leave the ARK Class Id blank under the column header on your import file and assign students manually in ARK. Using this feature will not save you time if you don't have many sections to sort through.

Every class you build in ARK gets a unique 5-digit ARK Class ID. If you put that ID in the ARK Class ID column of your student import file, ARK automatically assigns that student to the matching class the moment the file is imported. No manual sorting and assigning after the fact.

You need two things:

Step 1: Build your classes in ARK

Set up all your classes and sections in ARK first, the same way you normally would.

Step 2: Export your class list from ARK

Go to your Classes page and export the list. Each class shows its 5-digit ARK Class ID next to it.

Step 3: Export your student list from your SIS

Pull a student report or export from your school's SIS that shows, for each student, which teacher, period, or section they're in. This file will become your import file, matched to the student import template.

Step 4: Match each class to its ARK Class ID

Using your ARK class export from Step 2 as a reference, find the ARK Class ID for each teacher and period combination.

Step 5: Use Find & Replace to swap section info for ARK Class IDs

In your student file from Step 3, use Excel's Find & Replace (Ctrl+H on Windows, Cmd+H on Mac) to replace each teacher and period label with its matching ARK Class ID, one class at a time.

Example: every row that says "Smith Period 5" gets replaced with 12345. Every student in that class now has 12345 in the ARK Class ID column.

Repeat this for each class until every row has a 5-digit ARK Class ID instead of a teacher and period name.

Step 6: Import

Upload the finished file. ARK reads the ARK Class ID column and automatically places each student into the matching class. Note: Be sure that your final import file matches the student data template exactly. The ARK Class Id must be in Column L and all column headers and locations must match the template exactly.

Tip: Ensure all fields are in the correct columns, then copy and paste the top row of the template to ensure column header titles match exactly. Column headers must contain only the characters from the template and are case sensative.

A note on Find & Replace

You don't need to be an Excel expert for this. Find & Replace does the work for you; you're just telling it what to swap. Even doing this one class at a time, a school with 40 sections needs 40 replace actions, not hundreds or thousands of manual student selections. It's still dramatically faster than doing it from the Students page in ARK.