Test

The User page

All of the users in Insight can be found on this page. There are several columns in the list of users that give more information about the user account.

The activated column shows whether the account is active or not. An inactive account cannot be used to log in. There will be a tick in the Used column if the user has ever logged in, or if the Insight admin has ever logged into their account (see the Match Button, below).

When an account is first created, it will be given a randomly generated password (unless it is a SIMS or Active Directory account, which have their own passwords). There will be a tick in the Gen Pwd column if the account still has a randomly generated password; the tick will disappear once the user changes their password. The notified column tells you whether the user has had their login details sent to them via the password notification page.

The sorting column on the far right shows information about the pupils that the user is linked to. There will be a string of text for each pupil that the account is linked to, separated by a comma for each pupil. The first two characters are always 0. The next two characters are the pupil's year group and the final two characters are the pupil's registration group. For example, if a parent has a year 9 pupil in reg group 7F, the sorting string will read: 00077F. You can use this to find all of the parents of specific pupils. For example if you type 0009 into the sorting column filter, the users page will show you all of the users linked to year 9 pupils.

Creating and deleting users - the sync process

Synchronising is the process which creates and deletes users in Insight based on the information in SIMS or the Active Directory. The sync process will consider all of the contacts/staff in SIMS and decide whether or not to create an account for each of them. Insight will decide whether or not to create the accounts based on the user creation rules and synchronisation rules which you can modify.

To begin the sync process, click the Sync Button at the top right of the page. A window will open - first click Synchronise and you will then see the window below:

You need to choose which type of use you want to synchronise and whether or not to activate them. If a user is not activated, they will not be able to log in to Insight.

Parents

For a parent sync, Insight will scan all of the contacts in SIMS and create accounts for those that meet the user creation rules and synchronisation rules. You should review the rules before performing the sync.

You can then select three more options. Choose the role that you want applied to the parents' accounts. A role is a set of permissions that decides what the accounts can and cannot access.

Invalidate existing student links will only impact existing users. If an existing user is linked to a student and the user creation rules suggest that they shouldn't be linked to that student, then the link will be removed. If an account has no remaining links to any students, the account will also be deleted.

You will only need to use Purge AD accounts option when advised by our support staff.

Insight will then scan every contact in SIMS. This may be considerably higher than the number of students you have on roll. Once the sync has started you can continue using other areas of Insight or close the browser. The sync will continue in the background. If you do leave the Users page and then want to know how much progress has been made, go back to the Users page then click the Sync Button and select the Track option.

Once parents' accounts have been created, you can send their randomly generated passwords to them using the password notification page.

Staff

By default, staff will (once synch'ed) be able to log into INSIGHT using their SIMS credentials.

When performing a Staff based sync you will have more options than a parental sync. First you will need to choose the role for the staff users.

The User SIMS Credentials option will set the staff accounts' usernames and passwords to match the usernames and passwords of the staff accounts in SIMS. Staff may be recorded in SIMS but not have a user account. If this is the case, it will not be possible to use their SIMS username and password (as they don't exist). Accounts for these people will never be created if you select the "Only add accounts where staff have a SIMS account" option.

You will need to select the options to create accounts for teaching staff, non teaching staff or both. You will only need to use the Purge AD Accounts when advised by our support team.

If you opted to use SIMS credentials where possible, then staff can log on using their SIMS login details. If you did not check this option, or if some staff do not have SIMS logins, then their will be given randomly generated passwords. These can be issued to staff via the password notification page.

There is also an option for staff to be logged into INSIGHT seamlessly, providing that they are logged into the school network via Active Directory and also have 'Trusted SIMS' accounts.

In order to do this, staff must have PERSONID in the EmployeeID field of their AD record and should navigate to an alternate INSIGHT URL suffixed ADSSO.aspx in order for INSIGHT to log in the user seamlessly.

Students

Student accounts can only be created by linking Insight to the Active Directory, which requires the additional module, AD links. When performing a Student based sync you first need to choose the role for the student users.

Insight will scan the Active Directory, looking for students whose names match the name of students in SIMS. In Active Directory students can only have one forename and surname, whereas in SIMS students can have chosen names or legal names. Select whether you want Insight to check the Active Directory for students' legal names, chosen names, forename initials or a combination of the three.

If the sync finds more than one student in Active Directory with the same name (e.g. multiple John Smiths) then Insight will try to find a unique identifier as taken from the AD links page. If this is not possible, Insight will create accounts for these students but the Insight accounts will not be properly linked to AD. These accounts need to be manually linked after the sync has finished.

Once the sync has finished you will need to identify all the pupils who have not been properly linked. To do this, type the name of the role you used for students in the Rolename filter. Type the domain (from the AD links page) into the Username filter and then click the button next to it and select Doesn't Contain.

You should now see a list of all of the student accounts that have not been properly linked. One at a time, select the account, click the Edit Button, then click Link in the window that opens.

A list of the possible AD accounts will be shown. Either select the correct account or, if the correct account is not shown, use the search option to find the correct account from AD.

Automatic Synchronisation

INSIGHT can be configured to automatically perform a sync. To do this, you will need to first go to 'Accounts' > 'Users' and then click the button labeled 'Process' in the top right of the screen and then click 'Automate'.

This will open up a window which looks like this:

You will notice that there are tabs for Parental, Teaching Staff, Non-teaching Staff and Students.
Each of these tabs must be configured.

Firstly enable the option labeled 'Enable Automatic Synchronisation', then set the time you wish for the synchronization to run each day/night.

Other than this, the options available within each of the tabs will change. Within each of the tabs, there is an option to enable automatic synchronization for the type of person within the currently selected tab. e.g In the Parental tab there will be an option to 'Synchronise Parental Accounts' . This enables you to configure INSIGHT to run an automatic synch only for the individual person types you're interested in.

You will see that some of the options are repeated across multiple tabs and are fairly self-explanatory... But there are a couple of options which may not be so obvious. Here's a list of some such options and an explanation for what they do:

In the Parental Tab: New Accounts are Approved - This means that newly created accounts will be activated automatically. Run Match Process - This option ensures that parental usernames match their email address. This should not be enabled if you do not use email-like usernames.

In the Students Tab: Match Legal Match Chosen Match Initial

These options are relevant only when you do not create student accounts by importing unique student IDs into the student's AD records. The options instead set INSIGHT to create student accounts when a match is found based on the name data in the student's name and AD records.

Once you have configured all of the options within each of the tabs as you require, click 'Ok' in the bottom right and the Automatic Synchronisation should start to happen at the time you set in the top right of the 'Automate' window.

Important Side Note In order for this to work you have to have KeepAlive installed and running. To check this run the service controller on the IIs server that hosts Insight. Open the 'Services' option and you can check the current state of Keep Alive.

Troubleshooting Synchronisation

If some users seem to be missing then check the SIMS synchronisation report, which will highlight the reasons that particular accounts were not created. The SIMS synchronisation report is usually found in the Reports section.

Match

This button will appear at the top right side of the page as long you do not have the preference "Never use emails as usernames" switched on. This means that some parent users will likely have an email address as their username. The match process is used to update the parent's username if their email address changes.

Click on the Match button to begin updating usernames. If you select "Email-like usernames only" then only usernames that are already formatted like email addresses will be updated. Otherwise, all parental users' usernames will be updated to match their email address where possible (no two accounts can have the same email address or username).

Once a user's username has been updated, they will receive an email telling them what has happened. You can decide what message will appear in the email via the Insight preferences.