As a new academic year approaches, you may be starting think about how best to get your My School Portal solution ready.
Whether its making changes to roles and access, thinking about what new information you want to surface for parents, or just some general housekeeping; we’ve compiled a simple guide below to help you get up and running for the new academic year!
Content and Documents
When the new academic year rolls over, any Sections or Pages that have been made available to specific groups, e.g. Year 6, will be made available to the new Year 6 cohort. You may wish to consider if this information will still be relevant, or if the content needs updating.
Furthermore, as part of your review of your Sections and Pages, you may wish to review whether any of these are only specific to the current academic year, and may not be needed for the new academic year.
Any Sections or Pages you no longer need, you may consider either disabling or deleting or separating.
🤓Tip: You can drag and drop your Pages into any order you prefer within a section. You might find it easier to review already-disabled Pages by re-ordering them so that they all appear at the end of their Section; helping you to see all your disabled pages in one grouping.
It is a good idea to utilise the App Manager to double-check the layout of your My School Portal setup as it will appear to parents using the My School Portal app. The App Manager will tell you clearly if there are any pages which are enabled in the web portal, but not on the app; and it is our recommendation to keep this as consistent as possible – if a page is enabled in one (e.g. the web portal) it should also be available in the other.
🤓Tip: Similarly to impersonating as a user in the web portal - you can impersonate a user to see how the app itself looks for them. This can be done in the Users area of your Admin Tools by clicking the Impersonate in App button.
Similarly with Documents, you may wish to check that these have expiry dates (Where appropriate.)
For any Documents that have expired, or are no longer needed, you may wish to consider deleting, disabling or separating these also.
Events, Trips, Club and Activities
Clubs and Activities
If you are running any Clubs & Activities through My School Portal in the new academic year – including those which you have already set up in My School Portal - be sure to add new Sessions for the next term/academic year.
If any existing Clubs & Activities are no longer required, you may wish to delete these.
As highlighted in the previous section around Sections and Pages, review your existing setup and consider whether all existing Clubs & Activities pages are still required.
It is also good practice to check that Clubs & Activities dynamic year group permissions are still relevant.
Trips / Events
Similarly to the above, you should add any new Events or Trips you intend to run for the next term / academic year.
🤓Tip: It is possible to clone events / ‘create more events based upon this event’ which can help speed up this process.
There is no need to delete any Event / Trips which have already passed, as these are organised by date, and will be removed from the Calendar history if you do choose to delete them.
🤓Tip: It is possible to delete in bulk via the filters in your Admin Tools.
Custom Forms
It is good practice to download all Custom Form Submissions, if you have not already done so, to ensure you have a full record of everything submitted in the current academic year.
If any Custom Forms or Custom Form Packs are no longer required, you may consider Archiving these to help keep your system tidy.
If you already know which Forms you will need for the new academic year, you can create these.
🤓Tip: If versions of existing Custom Forms are required for the new academic year, you may consider cloning these to create new versions a little faster!
It is a good idea to check any Custom Forms used for your Prospective Parents and decide which of these need to be kept for the future (for example, Trip Consent forms.)
Consider which of your Custom Forms need to be requested and updated each year, for example, Medical Forms.
If any changes are required to a Custom Form – for instance, the addition of a new question - we would recommend cloning the existing form and making these amendments in the new version. This will help ensure previous responses are recorded.
Communications
In preparation for the new academic year, you may wish to create student-specific year group newsletters and messages, ready to send. Using My School Portal’s editor tools, you can include headers, paragraphs, images, links, attachments – and even utilise AI to help simplify or expand upon your content!
🤓Tip: If you have newsletters which are sent regularly and which use a pre-set layout, you can create blank Templates for these which can be loaded into your Communications at the click of a button!
Any emails you create within My School Portal can be saved as drafts, sent immediately or scheduled to send at a preferred date and time.
In addition to My School Portal’s Templates functionality, individual pre-existing Communications can also be cloned to create copies for editing, which may also be a time-saver.
Messages sent via My School Portal are one-way, but you can set reply-to email addresses, should you wish for responses to Communications to be sent to specific users or mailboxes.
Mailing Lists
In preparation for the new academic year, you can create dynamic mailing lists based upon specific data sources, including:
Students.
Specific Users.
Schools and Year Groups.
Student Groups.
Bookable Trips.
Non-bookable Trips.
Clubs and Activities.
Custom Form Packs.
Event Bookings.
Exam Results Cycles.
Report Cycles
Mailing Lists can also be created by selecting individuals recipients.
You may wish to review and delete and mailing lists that are no longer necessary for the new academic year. New mailing lists can be created as needed either within the Mailing List page in Admin Tools or can be created and saved when composing a new communication.
📌Note: Messages are retained within My School Portal. It is possible to delete messages (for example, any that are no longer required for leaving groups) but this is not recommended. Please note that this will not delete the message from the front-end of My School Portal if it has already been delivered to a recipient.
Leaves and New Members of Staff
Administrators
In preparation for the new academic year, you may wish to conduct a review of all staff and admin users who are set up within My School Portal. If anyone needs to be given access, or conversely no longer requires access, you may consider adding or deleting those individuals as required.
Admin Groups
We recommend conducting a review of your various Admin Groups, also; including a check of what each Admin Group grants access to, and which users are associated with which Admin Groups:
Are there any new members of staff joining your setting who would benefit from being an Administrator for My School Portal? If so, they should be added to the Admin Group(s) that best reflect the appropriate permissions for those users.
Conversely, do any members of staff need their access restricting based upon factors such as role changes?
Support System Access
If you need assistance with adding or revoking access for a member of staff to be able to request technical support with My School Portal, please reach out to our Support Team via the Access Digital Assistant!