Ethos Enablement

Last updated: August 28, 2026

For Banner & Colleague (Ellucian) schools only. If you exclusively connect by SFTP or the Public APIs, you can skip this.

Ethos is Ellucian's own integration platform. Housing.Cloud reads student and term data from it on a schedule and pushes housing assignments, meal-plan assignments, and charges back when records change — the Ellucian-native path, with no file-handling code for you to maintain.

Part A — For Campus IT

Two Environments, Two Keys

Housing.Cloud runs a practice environment (sandbox) and production; each connects to a matching Ellucian instance with its own API key. Create both as distinct applications and never point one environment's key at the other's instance (a repointed key is the most common early slip).

Create the Application

  1. In Ethos Integration → Applications, choose Create New App → Manually.
  2. Enable Configure REST API proxy; name it clearly (Housing Cloud – Test / Housing Cloud – Production).
  3. Add your SIS source app (Banner/Colleague Web API) with a dedicated API service account (e.g. HOUSINGCLOUD_API).
  4. Copy the API key (Applications → your app → API Keys tab) and send it via Sero/SecureSend — never plain email.
  5. Optional: restrict the key to Housing.Cloud's egress IPs.

Required Endpoints

Two separate grants are both required: the endpoints enabled with the right HTTP methods, and the resources added to the app's data access. A missing method is the most common cause of a "not authorized" response.

Flow Endpoints (version)
Profiles (ingress, read-only) persons v12, students v16, academic-periods, student-academic-periods, addresses v11 (optional)
Occupancies (egress) housing-assignments (POST/PUT/GET) v16, room-rates, rooms, buildings; Banner only: housing-requests v10
Meal Plan Assignments (egress) meal-plan-assignments (POST/PUT/GET) v16, meal-plans, meal-plan-rates; Banner only: meal-plan-requests v10
Transactions (egress) student-charges (POST/GET) v16, accounting-codes

Plan for These

  • Config changes aren't instant — SIS caching can delay a change minutes to ~24h; allow time before concluding it failed.
  • Transactions can post without confirmation — Ethos may time out after the SIS accepts a charge; Housing.Cloud has created clean-up tools admins can utilize to reconcile.
  • AR type is required for Colleague charges; share it — it's set in the config.

Banner-Specific Configuration

  • Set HEDM.ROOM.PERMIT.OVERRIDE in GORICCR to Y.
  • Map Ethos statuses to Banner in SLRMSCD (Colleague equivalent: VTHM).

Part B — For the Housing Team

Indexing & External IDs

Before anything can go to your SIS, Housing.Cloud learns how the SIS refers to each building, room, charge code, term, meal plan, and student. That's indexing, stored as an External ID on each record. A single assignment can carry 15+ External IDs.

If an External ID is missing, that record can't sync — so indexing comes first, and it's the first thing to check when something won't export.

Match rules: buildings/rooms on code then number; charge codes on the code value; cycles on the term code (exactly one); meal plans on the meal-plan code; profiles on student ID first, then school email (one student per ID, one unique school email).

The Test Cycle

Walk the full lifecycle, not a single create: assign → confirm occupancy + charge in the SIS; transfer/terminate/cancel → confirm the reversal/refund; assign/change/cancel a meal plan; test every room and rate type; start with a small pilot before any bulk push.

Reading Sync Health

  • Integrations Dashboard — every job shows Ingest → Fetch → Validate → Synchronize, with per-stage diagnostics.
  • Clean Up Failures — reconciles transactions the SIS accepted but Ethos didn't confirm.