Getting started with Elevate Standards Alignment (ESA) should feel seamless and rewarding—not slowed down by manual data work. Yet for many partners, importing pre-existing standards alignment data has been one of the most time-consuming steps in the onboarding process.
That’s why we’re excited to introduce Smart Importer, a new feature released for ESA Professional Edition on December 17, 2025. Smart Importer is designed to automate and simplify how you bring your existing alignment data into the ESA Alignment App—so you can get up and running faster and start seeing value sooner.
The Challenge: Complex Data and Manual Mapping
Standards alignment data comes from many sources, in many formats, and it’s consistently being updated. You may be working with standards that have been split or combined over time, pulled from outdated documents, or adjusted through years of revision. As a result, importing that data into ESA has historically required significant manual effort to map each standard to the correct Academic Benchmarks (AB) GUID.
This process can be slow, error-prone, and frustrating—especially when you’re eager to move forward with the fulfilling work of creating quality, standards-aligned content.
Smart Importer: Designed to Remove Friction
Smart Importer replaces manual mapping with an automated, guided workflow that helps content teams import alignment data accurately and efficiently.
To get started, you’ll upload your alignment data using a CSV file with a defined schema. Smart Importer processes the file in the background—supporting large files with more than 10,000 alignments—while you monitor progress through a dedicated Status Dashboard.
Built-in validation checks ensure required fields such as asset IDs, standard states, and descriptions are present. If something needs attention, clear and improved error messages point you directly to what needs to be fixed, reducing guesswork and rework.
Review and Approve with Confidence
Once processing is complete, Smart Importer presents intelligent alignment recommendations mapped to AB GUIDs, along with confidence scores. A streamlined review interface allows you to:
- Filter recommendations by high, medium or low confidence
- Focus manual review only where it’s truly needed
When you’re ready, you can initiate the final import of all approved alignments. Imported data becomes immediately visible across the platform, including the “align by object” and “align by standard” views.
You will also be able to download detailed reports on all the alignments that were and weren’t imported. This makes it easy to resolve issues and re-run the process if needed.
What’s Next
Smart Importer is an important step toward a more automated and scalable standards alignment experience. We’re focused on refining workflows for maximum efficiency, so content teams can spend more time on higher-value tasks and higher-order thinking. With that goal in mind, the ESA product team is exploring AI-powered approaches to crosswalking standards, helping identify conceptual equivalence across states, subjects, and frameworks.
We’re excited to improve the Elevate Standards Alignment onboarding and user experience with Smart Importer. It’s the first of many ways ESA will help you spend less time managing data and more time focusing on meaningful standards alignment.
