How do the user recommendations work?

Many school have us automatically creating their users for them. Every night PowerSchool sends a new file and after we import that file the system will look for staff that don't have an account already and then create that account. But how does it know what kind of account to make?

Types of accounts

• Individual Users - these accounts only see their own information and lists that another account shared with them. We'll call them teacher accounts for the purposes of this article
• Group Users - these accounts are members of a group. Think of a group as a school or department like PowerSchool High School (shout out to Indiana PSUG) or the Transportation department. There are 2 types of groups though
  • Primary group. This is the group that all customers have. There is only 1 per customer and it's normally named for your organization. This group has access to all lists from all teacher and school groups. Let's call this the District group. 
  • Secondary groups. These groups are your schools, departments, etc. These groups only see their own information but all members of these groups see the same information. We'll refer to these as school groups even though they may not be a school.

The logic the export uses

While a real person can decide on an individual basis where to put new users, an automated process needs to follow specific rules. When the staff export runs it makes a recommendation based on these rules which are then used when automatically creating an account. The logic for the recommendation are as follows:

• Can a user log into PowerSchool (admin)?
  • If Yes, can the user switch to District Office (PSU for North Carolina users)?
    • If Yes: Recommendation = District group
    • If No: Recommendation = Group representing the user's home school
  • If No, can the user log into PowerTeacher?
    • If Yes: Recommendation = Teacher account
    • If No: Recommendation = No automatic account creation

How can you change where it puts users

The automatic account creation only pertains to new accounts, it will not move accounts from 1 place to another. If you've already created an account where you want it the recommendation won't matter as the account already exists.

However, if the account doesn't exist it will be created wherever the recommendation tells it. So how can you change where it will put a user?

• Teacher accounts are individuals so the only way to make them not a teacher account is to give them admin access. They don't actually have to have valid login credentials, just the checkbox at the top of the Admin Access and Roles security tab has to be checked. That will be enough to change the path of the recommendation away from teacher account.
• District will be the recommendation for anyone who has admin access and can switch to district office, so to change that you'd need to remove district office from the list of schools in the Admin and Access Roles security tab. Technically this only needs to be removed until the account is generated. Once generated you can put it back as the recommendation only applies to new users, not existing users
• School users are always recommended to be placed in their home school. So if you'd like them to be placed in a different school you can change the home school for that user.

What if the user has already been created?

If the user already exists there are 2 ways to move them.

1. Email support and we can move them for you
2. Delete the user from our system so that the user gets re-created overnight. Before the export runs make sure the recommendation is where you want the user to go.

How can I see user recommendations?

There are 2 places to see where the recommendation would put the user.

1. To see where the recommendation is for just 1 person you can find it in their account.
   1. Do a staff search for this person and go into their record
   2. Click the BrightArrow link
   3. The tab labeled BrightArrow Permissions will show you under the column Recommended Access
2. To see more than 1 person at a time
   1. Navigate to System > BrightArrow Settings
   2. Click on the Individual Settings tab