How to create a Staff/Guardian (User) profile

In MySchool, users are non student members of your community. When creating a user, you are required to give them 'context'. Users can become guardians, staff members, Teachers, Mentors(LSE), or donors. This will give them access to their relevant portals and control module access on your Myschool platform. Here we will look at the data fields available in a user profile.

How do we create a new user?

Staff members with the right to minimum edit and minimum view rights in their user groups can create a user profile. This permission will be given to administrators, admissions, and finance teams. Educators normally would not this functionality. It can be added at your request. Consult this article and contact your CSM to discuss who should be able to create these profiles.

There are two ways to open a new user profile; Either Quick action toolbar, or in Administer/Teacher & staff menu header. 

Whats can we store in a user profile?

User profiles are different to student profiles, but are still organised by tabs. You can add photos to your staff profiles as well, which can help in larger communities. It also makes the profile a little more personal!

Under the user name, you will see the context that this user has. As we explained, context allows users to access various areas on your portal. Guardians can access the parent portal, Staff members access modules depending on their user group permissions, Course and class Teachers have access to the tools they need on a daily basis e.g. Course/class lists, Schedules, Attendance, Assignments, Assessments amongst others.

The profiles can be seen in edit or view mode. Permissions can be altered for staff members to only view or view and edit/create.

1. Particulars

This is the general information page for a user. In edit mode. 

• Title, common name and common surname - Enter the name usually used by the user. This is the quick search name as well. You can add a legal name if different by clicking on show legal names. 
• Gender - An option to add a gender. 
• Date of birth - It maybe a requirement for your staff member profiles, but not needed for other user groups. Click on the calendar and select date from the pop up.
• City/Country of birth
• Passport/ID and Expiry date - This can be used to store real ID numbers or it can be used for your internal ID system. It is a free text field.
• Account number - If you are using the finance module this will be needed to create an account for the invoice payer.
• Nationality - Split into the most common and then a generic list. If a nationality is used regularly it will automatically populate the common list.
• Comment - An open text field.

2. Contact tab

This is for all contact details relating to the user. 

Important note: When sharing addresses between guardians and their student dependants. You must do this from the student contact tab and not the guardian contact tab. You can however share the address between guardians on their respective profiles. We advise that guardian's address is the main address for the family or household.

• Primary email address - This will be used for contact purposes, but it is also used for logging into your platform. The emails MUST be unique for each user. They also must be in a valid format. User profiles can be saved with no primary email, but you must set their security status to be disabled/archived. All active users must have a primary email address.
• Secondary email address - Stores a secondary email address to the user profile. It is not a unique field. By default, these are not activated for communications purposes. If you would like the platform to send to both then please contact your CSM to activate this.
• Email opt-in - These are important for communications. By default, both are enabled. Most announcements are sent as non-essential mail. However individual users can opt-out of receiving these communications. Administrators can reset these, but we advise you to have confirmation from the users first.
• Address fields
  • Salutation -  Individual
  • Addressee - In the case of a household this will be Mr & Mrs or even change it to the 'The family surname'
  • Address 1-3, city, state, postcode, country
  • Phone number - Add as many types of contact numbers as you need. If it is a cell type then it will be used in the SMS module when sending information.

3. Dependants tab

This is the first part of giving your user profile context. Select add contact and enter an active student's name into the search field. You must select a relationship from the drop-down list. Have a look at this article for more info on access permissions for guardians. 

After the profile is saved the user will have guardian user group access rights to the parent portal.

4. Security

When you create a user profile manually the user status is always set to Active. As explained earlier in order to save the profile, a valid email address must be entered in the primary email address field.

• User status - Active/disabled or archived
• Lock status - allows profiles to be temporarily locked out of the system.
• User activity - Allows super administrators to view details on the user's login dates, times, and IP.
• User ID - Every user in MySchool has a unique ID. This is generated automatically and cannot be changed.
• Group membership -Allows staff users to be added to non-inherent user groups such as Administrators, Super key users, Finance and Admissions for example.

5. Employment

The employment tab and details are important as it allows users to become staff members. It also holds the staff consent and custom fields.

• General Employment
  • Job title - You can add the job title of staff or non-staff users if you have this information.
  • Employer - Add the employer for external users.
  • Insurance number
  • Teaching warrant number
• School Employment
  • Active employment status - For a user to gain access to the staff portal. They must be set as active. The start date can be altered but by default will the date of activation. If an employee leaves your institution, then DO NOT DELETE the profile. Simply set it to past employees, and remove them from any fixed member user groups. 
• Staff consents
  • These can be created in consent management the same as the students. 
  • They must be entered manually as they will not work with questionnaires
• Custom fields
  • We can create up to 50 custom fields by default on your platform. Contact your CSM to discuss this with them.
  • Guardian custom fields will appear in the dependant's tab.

6. Qualifications

You enter your educator's level and qualifications on this tab, as well as their language skills.

7. Teaching

The Teaching tab is important as it will give context for the user to become either a class Teacher, Course Teacher or Mentor (LSE). 

In edit mode open and select the appropriate options by searching for the names and adding them to the profile. After saving the profile, the appropriate context will be added to the user profile under their name. 

Note that Donor and Mentor are not main groups and will not appear under their names, even the user will inherit the permissions in those user groups. Also, note that the context is not time limited. if a Teacher stops teaching a specific course, then unenroll the staff user from the course here.

8. Timetable

Very similar to the student view, when a course has a schedule and timetable, and the Teacher has been added as a course teacher, other users can view their schedules from here. My Schedules is used by each user to view their own schedules. The user's timetable will also show holidays and appointments. If you have appointment administrator rights, you can add an appointment to a user's schedule in Edit mode on their profile.

9. Files

Any personal files relating to the user can be uploaded to this tab. These are not visible to the user and are for internal use only. Note that there is a limit to the size, so no videos or photo books can be uploaded here.

10. Bus

If a staff user has been assigned to manage a school bus then you can add to the bus route via this tab.

11. Donor

The donor tab contains details in relation to the donation management module.