Test

Creating Accounts (the Sync process)

Parental

First check that you have configured appropriate synchronisation rules to create accounts for parents. Parental accounts are also influence by the User Creation preferences.

Once you are happy with the Synchronisation Rules and the User Creation Preferences, click the Process button at the top right of the page then select Synchronise. A window will appear.

Enable the Set the new users' activated status as 'Activated' option and select Parental, then click Synchronise. 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 Process > Synchronise select the Track option.

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

Student

The Student Synchronisation window

Student accounts can only be created by linking Insight to the Active Directory, which requires the additional module, AD links.

Once the AD Links page has been configured, check that you have configured appropriate synchronisation rules to create accounts for students.

By default Insight will not create accounts for students who are leavers or pre-admission. If you would like accounts to be created for these students, go to:
Manage > Preferences > User Creation
There are settings here called:

• Largest number of days in the future for admission dates of applicants
• Date Of Leaving grace days before considered Off Roll
  
  
  

Finally run the Sync Process to create accounts for students. To do this click the Process button at the top right of the page then select Synchronise. A window will appear.

The option at the top of the window reads Set the new users' activated status as 'Activated'. Enable this if you want the students to be able to log in to Insight immediately. Next select the Students option. Leave the 3 checkboxes unticked then click Synchronise.

Staff

To create staff accounts, click the Process button at the top right of the page then click Synchronise.

The option at the top of the window reads Set the new users' activated status as 'Activated'. Enable this if you want the staff to be able to log in to Insight immediately. If you do not enable this option, then staff accounts will be deactivated, meaning they cannot log in until the accounts are activated at a later time.

Select the Staff option and more options will appear in the window. Select the role that you want to give to the staff accounts from the dropdown (see the roles page for further information about roles).

Use SIMS credentials where possible
This option allows staff to use their SIMS login details to log in to Insight. The alternative is for Insight to create a new username and password for staff.

Only add accounts where staff have a SIMS account
This will prevent members of staff without SIMS accounts from logging in to Insight.

Synchronise teaching staff
Enable this option if you want Insight to create accounts for teachers.

Synchronise non-teaching staff Enable this option if you want Insight to create accounts for non-teachers.

Finally, click the Synchronise button and Insight will create accounts for staff, according to the options selected.

Single Sign On

A Trusted Authentication Account in SIMS

Insight is capable of Single Sign On (SSO) so that staff do not need to log in to Insight, as long as they are logged in to the school network via Active Directory. Staff must also have Trusted Authentication logins for SIMS.

SSO requires Insight to be linked to the Active Directory, which requires the additional module, AD links. Staff must have their Person_ID number stored in the EmployeeID field of their AD record. Instructions for performing this task are found on the AD links page.

Once the above conditions have been satisfied, staff should use the ADSSO.aspx page of Insight to login when they are connected to the school network, e.g.
https://insight.myschoolwebsite.co.uk/Insight/ADSSO.aspx

Changing Usernames to Email Format (the Match process)

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.

Ye Olde Stuff

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.

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.