Why don't users see the links in the enhanced UI?
PowerSchool's enhanced UI has been here for almost a year and in the back to school 2024-25 release (expected around May 2024) that UI will be mandatory. The new UI encourages links to be added to the interface via a registration process.
This process, in turn, creates an new method to do page permissions. With the new page permission tool when you give a group "No Access" it doesn't just prevent the user from seeing data when they click on the link, it now will hide the link as well.
BrightArrow has had a user based, not group based, permission structure for years. This allows you to grant users access on an individual level so one person can have access while another person within the same group might not. When you grant a user access it shows the links and when you remove it the links are hidden. Even in the enhanced UI this has been the case.
Where the confusion comes in
As more schools, and soon all schools, move to the enhanced UI there are more people experimenting with the new group level page security page which now makes it easier to change those permissions than the old UI. Changes to the permissions to the BrightArrow pages create a scenario where the links are hidden by force even when the user is supposed to have permission.
In the screenshot we see that only plugin pages are being requested and in this case pages that are specifically set to No Access. In this scenario any user in that group will default to not have access to the BrightArrow pages even if that user is enabled in the BrightArrow settings page.
Why "default" to not have access?
The reason we say the group security defaults to not have access is that adding a 2nd group to the user, via Role Security, could give those pages back. Its mearly acknowledging the fact that a person whose default group is set to not have access can still be granted access in another way. If I have group 2, in this scenario, as my default group but I also have a role that has group 4 assigned to it and group 4 has access to these pages then I'd be able to see them should the BrightArrow setting be turned on for me. But if I don't have a role that grants a different group's permissions then I won't have access even if I'm turned on within the BrightArrow settings page.
What should be done?
Over the years we've all dealt with different members of the same group who need different things. Sometimes we might enable that function for the group even though others in the group don't need it. Other times we might make an additional group that is nearly identical except this 1 difference and put that person in this other group instead. More recently we can use Roles to grant additional access to specific pages as well.
Our recommendation is to leave the BrightArrow pages on Group Default. This will ensure you can grant access to people reliably and know that the links will show as you intended. By leaving BrightArrow disabled for everyone else you'll be able to hide the interface from those you don't want to use it and reveal it for those you do regardless of group.
That said, if you are comfortable with how to grant page permissions via role security and are prepared to take that on then you can also enable BrightArrow for everyone and then use roles to actually grant access (keep in mind for this to work all must default to no access so that you can add access to the individuals you want to use it). This is how some of us would do individual page permissions for our districts as a whole given that the vast majority of pages won't have a way to do individual access as the BrightArrow pages do. So if you are doing this already for your other pages it would be understandable to do it for BrightArrow as well. But if you are only doing group security for page permissions then we recommend not setting our pages to "No Access" for groups.