Creating Staff Members & Groups

MySchool school management is designed for all the staff members to be able to access their relevant modules and functionalities they need on a daily basis. with our user groups, schools can create interfaces for all of their community. let's have a look at the basic staff user groups. For more a more advanced understanding then check out this article. 

How do I create a new staff profile?

All staff members are created as users, so for super users with the correct rights, you create user profiles with the quick actions create button 

After completing the fields on the particulars tab, all staff members should have a valid primary email. Otherwise they will be unable to log into the MySchool portal. The next step is to go to the employment tab, and set them as an 'active employee' in edit mode. Assign them to the appropriate school levels, and then save.

When the profile is saved, you will notice that the user changes to a staff member. They now have access to the staff user group. on default MySchool, this gives access to the portal and announcements. No other functionality is attached to this user group normally.

Inherent roles

In MySchool we have two main user group categories in MySchool. The first and most common is known as an inherent group, and the second is a fixed member group. 

The inherent groups are system defaults, and membership is acquired by enrolment or employment. These groups are :

1. Staff - Inherited by making the user an employee

2. Course Teacher - Inherited by assigning the user as the primary/secondary teacher within an active course

3. Class Teacher - Enrol the user as a class Teacher in any active class. They wil inherit the class Teacher user group permissions.

4. Mentor - If a user is assigned to a signal student in their teaching tab, then they will inherit the Mentor user group rights.

Fixed member groups

Fixed member groups are designed for specific operational needs. The super user and administrator groups are created as default, but we can help you amend there viewing rights whenever you need. For a list of the modules available on MySchool then check out this article. This will help you determine what the suer groups should access. 

Here are a few examples of what fixed groups can be created;

1. Admin/Super user

We strongly advise that you maintain a super user group with limited membership. This group will be able to control system settings, and maintain the MySchool infrastructure. They should have access to all areas, and be the point of control for year and term management. 

The administrator group can have reduced access but still be able to maintain the data within your system, so access to profiles, and enrolment is key for them. They should have the rights to change the infrastructure.

2. Finance

The finance team will not need access to attendance, assignments, grade reports, and would only need to see a few of the tabs of user and student profiles. This can be set up for them to only have access to Finance, Donations, and profiles for example.

3. Admissions team

The admissions team will not need to have access to any system configuration, assessments, attendance, and possibly not finance options. They would be able to manage enrolment, admissions module, and have access to the contact details for students and users. 

4. School nurse/medical team

In certain schools, you may wish to create a fixed group for your onsite medical responders. So that they can access student health tab, and guardian contact details. We can extract the medical reports from the data report section and allow them access to these if needed.

FAQ's about staff and their user groups

Administrators must be aware that although the system is flexible, and can be adapted, it still has security limitations. If you wish to create a new user groups, then start by preparing an access tree, who should have access to what functionality. Organise this internally then arrange a call with your CSM for further guidance.

Can a staff user be a member of both inherent and fixed member groups

Yes, all staff users can have a mix of group memberships

I have placed the user in the user group, but they still can't access the functionality, why?

Remember to set the context in either the secuirty tab in their profile or members tab in user groups.

If an employee leaves and then returns how do I go about reinstating this?

When an employee leaves, you have to set them to past employee in their employment tab. You will need to manually remove them from the fixed member groups. Don't forget to set them as archived in the secuirty tab. Once they are archived then they should not be able to access the system. When you need to reinstate them then simply place them in current classes or courses if they are Teacher and reactivate them as an employee. They would need to be replaced in their fixed member groups again.

Certain Teachers should have access to more information than others, is this possible?

For inherent groups 9Teachers, mentors for example) then we would have to look at the request in detail. It is not possible to split an inherent group, but we maybe able to help with an SQL based group, or create a fixed member group with advanced access.

The group has access to a functionality, but still the member cannot see it on their interface, what is wrong?

Certain reports or functionalities are set at a school level, such as term or year management for example. If the member has been given only access to school level and not the full school then this may block them from using this. Talk to our support team about the needs, and we can help advise you on the correct settings.