By connecting realsmart to ASM, you can automate the creation of Managed Apple IDs, streamline class rosters, and ensure your school’s devices and learning materials are always assigned to the right people from day one.

Here is a quick overview of how to get your realsmart system talking to Apple School Manager.

(For the complete step-by-step technical guide, please check out our full support article: )

Step 1: Generate SFTP Credentials in Apple School Manager

First, you’ll need to tell Apple School Manager that you want to securely import data using SFTP.

1. Log into your Apple School Manager account with Administrator privileges.

2. Navigate to your Setup Assistant (or Data Source settings) and choose the option to set up an SFTP connection.

3. Apple will automatically generate a set of SFTP credentials for you. Make a note of the SFTP URL, Username, and Password provided.

Step 2: Add Your Credentials to realsmart

Once Apple has provided your secure SFTP details, you need to input them into realsmart so our system can do the heavy lifting for you.

1. Log into your realsmart admin console.

2. Navigate to the ASM integration settings.

3. Enter the SFTP URL, Username, and Password exactly as they appeared in Apple School Manager.

4. Save your configuration.

Step 3: Uploading Data and Reviewing the Sync

With the connection established, realsmart will compile your MIS data—such as students, staff, and classes—into the correctly formatted CSV files and push them directly to ASM.

1. Trigger the data upload from your realsmart dashboard.

2. Head back over to Apple School Manager.

3. You should see that ASM is processing the newly received files. Click to review the SFTP data to ensure your user accounts and class structures look correct.

4. Once you’re happy with the preview, confirm the sync to create your accounts and classes!

Let Us Help You Get Set Up!

Automating your data sync between realsmart and Apple School Manager removes the headache of manual data handling. If you get stuck along the way or would like a hand configuring your SFTP connection, our team is always here to help.

Read the full technical documentation here:

Or, reach out to our support team directly to get in touch:

*** Happy syncing!

The post How to Connect Your MIS to Apple School Manager appeared first on realsmart.

1. Branding and Visual Identity

The website must immediately convey the school’s ethos, values, professionalism and environment. Consistency in branding builds trust and recognition. Effective branding can be replicated across stationary as well as all digital platforms. 

Logos and Color Palette

• Logo Implementation: The official school logo should be high resolution and positioned prominently, typically in the top left or center of the header. Ensure it links back to the homepage.
• Color Scheme: The website’s colour palette must align with the school’s official colours, ideally using a maximum of three primary colours for design elements to maintain a clean, cohesive look. These colours tend to match up with the school uniform but this is not always the case. Secondary colours are used to add pops of contrast to the design, items such as buttons or hover states.
• Typeface: Use a consistent typeface across the design, you can use a combination of typefaces for example one of headings and another for body copy. Try and select a typeface that you can use across your website and stationary for consistency.

Photography and Imagery

High-quality, relevant photography is crucial for conveying the school’s atmosphere.

• Authenticity: Use genuine photos of students and staff in daily activities rather than generic stock images. How many school websites have the image of fire in a science lab?
• Permissions: Always ensure all people featured have provided the necessary consent (permission forms).
• Diversity: Photography should reflect the full diversity of the school community.
• Quality: Images must be well-lit, in focus, and optimized for web use (compressed) to ensure fast loading times. Plan your photographer to come in bright months such as May.
• Value for money: Avoid too many photos of students in their final year at the school so that the images can be used across a number of years.

2. Understanding Stakeholder Needs and Menu Structure

A user first design begins with catering to the needs of different audiences. A clear, intuitive menu structure is essential for user experience (UX) and navigation. Schools have so many stakeholders that a menu needs to be clear and concise, and keep the amount of headings down.

Key stakeholders and their needs

Example Menu Structure

Limit the main menu to 5-8 clear items, not only does this allow space in the header it also limits the areas stakeholders would need to look through. Here is an example menu structure that we see commonly implemented:

1. Home
2. Our School/About: Ethos & Values, Headteacher Welcome, History, Staff List, Job Vacancies.
3. Admissions: Policy, How to Apply, Open Day Information.
4. Key Information: Admissions, Statutory Documents, Policies, Term Dates.
5. Students: Subject Pages/Curriculum (e.g., English, Maths), Assessment, Remote Learning, Exam Information.
6. Parents: Letters Home, Uniform Policy, Parent Portal Login.
7. News & Events: Latest News, Calendar, Newsletters.
8. Contact

Design Note: Ensure a functional search bar is prominently displayed, as many users prefer to search rather than navigate menus.

3. DfE and Statutory Requirements for UK Schools

Compliance with the Department for Education (DfE) requirements is mandatory and therefore should be at the top of your list when designing a school website. All required information must be easily accessible, ideally through the Key Information or Statutory Information section, You do not want Ofsted having to search through multiple areas of your website. 

Essential Information Requirements

• Contact Details: Name, postal address, telephone number, and the name of the person who handles queries.
• Admissions: Current and future arrangements.
• Policies: Behaviour, Safeguarding, Charging and Remissions, and Complaints Policy (All should be linked to a PDF file for viewing or download).
• Curriculum: Content and approach for each academic year.
• Pupil Premium/Catch-Up Funding: Strategy and impact report.
• Ofsted: Link to the school’s most recent report.
• Governance: Information on the governing body, including attendance and register of interests.
• Financial Information: Staff salary details (£100k or more).

We have a that you can follow along with previous blog posts.

4. Technical Performance and SEO

A beautiful, compliant website is useless if it cannot be found via search engines and Ai queries. Strong Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and technical performance are essential.

Technical Requirements (the bits we can help with)

• Mobile Friendly Design: The website must be fully responsive and optimized for mobile devices, as this is how Google primarily indexes websites.
• Speed (Core Web Vitals): Optimize images, minimize code, and use fast hosting to ensure quick loading times, which is a major ranking factor.
• Security (HTTPS): The entire site must be secure using an SSL certificate (HTTPS).
• Sitemap: Submit an XML sitemap to Google Search Console to ensure all pages are crawled and indexed efficiently.

We run regular accessibility, lighthouse and penetration tests to ensure the platform your website runs on is up to scratch. Taking this worry our of designing a school website is a real benefit of using a provider such as realsmart.

Content Strategy

• Target Local Keywords: Optimize every applicable page title and meta description using the school’s name and location. Think about how many schools share the same name, for example St Mary’s. 
• News/Blog Section: Regularly publish original, high-quality content related to school life (trips and events), education trends (project based learning), or local community news, targeting relevant keywords. Ensure articles include a descriptive title and date.
• Metadata: Write unique, compelling Title Tags (under 60 characters) and Meta Descriptions (under 160 characters) for every single page.
• Don’t neglect the footer: The footer of your website is an important element. Generally your visitors will scroll down here to look for contact information so why not make use of this area an present them with even more information such as key links, accreditations etc. This content then appears on every page.

5. Keep it simple!

This may sound a bit counterintuitive since we’ve just covered a range of topics to cover but it actually makes sense when you dig into some key points:

• Simplify content: ensure your users do not need to scroll though endless amounts of content on a page. Break content down into sections or even sub pages. Use items such as accordions to hide content until a clear and concise title is clicked on. The easier your content is to scan then the faster stakeholders will find what they desire. 
• Single point of truth: Upload all of your policies into a single section, then when you refer to a specific policy on another page (admissions for example), simply link back to the policies page rather than the individual file. This ensures that you only need to keep on top of one single area for policy management. We’ve got multiple solutions for easy management of policies!
• Single news source: Decide early on in the process how you will present your latest news, this could be via social media that can then be embedded on the website or via blog post that is displayed on your homepage that you can then share via socials. You only need to be posting an article once!
• Schedule in time to update your website: Instead of chipping away at bits when they arise, plan in some annual time to focus on updating key aspects of your website. Changing and updating the images used on the site, uploading new policies, changing the term dates for the next academic year. Put these updates in your calendar or use our email reminder functionality to plan when to make updates. 
• Make use of integrations: We have multiple methods of integrating with Microsoft and Google Solutions, Whether it be policy management or displaying a calendar, we’ve got solutions to help you!

Don’t forget that our support team is always here to help you! Just drop us an email to support@realsmart.co.uk

A final word

By integrating a solid brand, clear navigation for all stakeholders, full DfE compliance, and a strong technical foundation, the school website will serve you well and require minimal day to day input. Designing a school website is the hard work that really pays off if you do it well.

The post Designing a school website our essential guide appeared first on realsmart.

That is why we proudly announce our new Custom Google OU (Organisational Unit) feature! Moreover, this feature will help you align Google Workspace with your school’s existing IT systems and unique DNA.

You can now easily differentiate YouTube access between Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 5. You can also apply specific Chromebook policies for staff versus students. Our latest update puts the power of granular control directly into your hands, making it easier to ensure your school’s unique DNA matches your Google Workspace and IT systems alignment.

What is the Custom Google OU Feature?

Previously, syncing users from your MIS to Google Workspace streamlined account creation. Now, we are taking our School MIS Sync services to the next level. By the way, you can align Google Workspace more closely with your school’s unique DNA and existing IT systems thanks to these improvements.

Administrators can automatically map specific groups or roles from your MIS. These map directly into custom Organisational Units (OUs) within Google Workspace. Do you add or move a student in your MIS? Our sync instantly places them into the correct Google OU. They will automatically inherit the specific policies you set for that unit, ensuring that Google Workspace fits your school’s unique DNA and integrates smoothly with your existing IT systems.

Why This is a Game-Changer for Your School

1. Ultimate Safeguarding and Policy Control Not all users need the same access. You might want to restrict certain apps for Year 7s. At the same time, you can keep them open for Year 13s and staff. Automating your custom OUs lets you apply tailored security settings precisely where they belong. This transition truly aligns Google Workspace policies with your school’s unique DNA as well as existing IT systems.

2. Zero Manual Intervention Say goodbye to manual tasks in the Google Admin Console. You no longer need to drag and drop users into different OUs every term. Our automated School MIS Sync services read your live MIS data. The system does the heavy lifting for you multiple times a day. In short, you can seamlessly align Google Workspace with your school’s unique DNA and existing IT systems.

3. Accurate, Real-Time Updates Students frequently change classes, move year groups, or leave the school. Your MIS immediately registers these changes. Our sync spots the update and instantly adjusts their OU status in Google Workspace. This ensures your digital safeguarding remains 100% accurate and up to date. Furthermore, Google Workspace stays aligned with both your school’s unique DNA and any existing IT systems you already have in place.

How to Get Started

Are you an existing realsmart customer using our MIS to Google Sync? You can start using Custom OUs right now, and align Google Workspace with your school’s unique DNA and existing IT systems from the start.

We created a comprehensive guide to configure custom mappings in your admin dashboard. Check out the full documentation here: s. This resource will ensure Google Workspace is aligned with your school’s unique DNA and fully integrates with existing IT systems.

Not Using realsmart Yet?

Many schools still manually provision Google accounts or struggle with clunky data exports. It is time to automate the alignment between Google Workspace, your school’s unique DNA, and your existing IT systems.

Our industry-leading School MIS Sync services integrate seamlessly with major MIS platforms. These include SIMS, Bromcom, Arbor, and more. The system automatically provisions users, Google Classrooms, timetables, and Custom OUs. We save IT teams hundreds of hours every single year. Your school’s data remains secure and perfectly organised, all while keeping Google Workspace in harmony with your school’s unique DNA and existing IT systems.

Click here to book a free demo to see how we can transform your IT management today while making sure Google Workspace aligns with your school’s unique DNA and existing IT systems.

The post Announcing Custom Google OUs: Unlock Granular Control with Our School MIS Sync Services appeared first on realsmart.

Website news

As well as general updates to our codebase to ensure it works as efficiently as possible we have also released a host of new plugins and features. Here is a quick insight into what has been developed:

• New policy/document manager plugin
• Multisite functionality for the policy/document manager plugin
• Vacancies plugin
• Login link shortcode
• Started development on a parents evening booking system plugin

Policy manager plugin

We’ve developed a plugin that allows you to manage all of your policys (or other grouped documents) directly from within your school website. This offers an alternative to our existing plugins that allow you to display the contents of either a or folder directly onto your school website. With this final addition to our policy management offering we now offer solutions for any approach of managing doucments on your website.

Our plugin allows you to create groups in which you can assign doucments uploaded to your school website, this allows you to not only manage policies but also other potential groups of documents such as letters home, newsletters etc. Once you’ve uploaded a group of documents you can simply paste a provided shortcode into a page and then voila, your documents all appear in a user friendly interface. Interested? Take a look at our guide on setting up and using the plugin .

Policy manager multi-site functionality

After the policy manager plugin was released we started work on an update that would allow users to display a group of documents across more than one website. The advantage of this update is that it now allows a trust to manage a set of trust wide policies from one single location. The trust can then display this group of policies/documents across every school website for easy document management.

Vacancies Plugin

The second plugin we’ve released is a vacancies plugin, this allows you to add and display current vacancies on your school/trust website. We know there are some great options and methods of advertising vacancies already out there such as services like MyNewTerm but we are providing schools with a free alternative to displaying vacancies on their school website. The plugin allows you to easily create a vacancy, add instructions, set dates for it to display and also assign any relevant documents to a role. Each vacancy added is then displayed in a user friendly template until the close date is reached.

Take a look at our on setting up and using the plugin if you are interested.

Login link shortcode

We know there are some customers who do not have a need for the login bar on our websites as they do not use the single sign on, MIS sync and apps management services we have intergrated with our websites. Usually we would just turn off the bar and then provide a more subtle login link to access the backend of the website. We have now developed an option (located in your smartOptions panel) that allows you to grab a login link shortcode, this can then be placed anywhere on your school website for easy access. Simple but effective this now opens the doors for all sorts of alternative and creative login options.

Parents evening booking system

In early development stages but we have started work on a parents evening booking system that will be inbuilt into your school website. This leverages the abilitys of WordPress so that the timeslots can be displayed in your website, confirmation emails sent and also an admin interface to setup and customise the event. Parents will be able to book a slot and will receive confirmation upon success. Teachers will be able to cusomise the amount of slots avaialble, the length of slots and also add in any requried breaks.

Take a sneak peak below:

Half Term is here!

We hope you all have a well earned half term break! Keep an eye out for future updates from the team and don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any queries or suggestions!

Team realsmart

The post Half term review and updates appeared first on realsmart.

We’re thrilled to announce a powerful new feature for ÌÇÐÄVlog School Websites: seamless integration with Microsoft OneDrive! This exciting development makes it easier than ever to embed and share files directly from your school’s OneDrive onto your website pages.

Imagine effortlessly displaying newsletters, permission slips, learning resources, and important documents right where your students, parents, and staff can find them. No more downloading and re-uploading – just a simple, streamlined process.

Why You’ll Love the ÌÇÐÄVlog OneDrive Integration:

• Effortless File Sharing: Directly embed files and folders from OneDrive into your ÌÇÐÄVlog website.
• Always Up-to-Date: Any changes made to your files in OneDrive will automatically reflect on your website.
• Quick setup: A straightforward setup process means you can be up and running in no time.

Getting Started: A Quick Guide

Integrating OneDrive with your ÌÇÐÄVlog website involves a few straight-forward steps within your Microsoft Azure portal and your website’s WordPress admin area. Our comprehensive online guide, complete with step-by-step screenshots, will walk you through the entire process.

ÌÇÐÄVlog OneDrive Integration: Step-by-Step

• Register a New Application in Microsoft Azure: This initial step ensures secure communication between your OneDrive and your ÌÇÐÄVlog website. To do this, you’ll navigate to the ‘App registrations’ page in Azure.
• Configure Your Application: Next, you’ll provide a name for your application and specify account types.
• Obtain Credentials: Then, you’ll generate a ‘Client Secret’ and note down your ‘Application (Client) ID’ and ‘Directory (Tenant) ID’. The guide shows you exactly where to find these on the ‘Overview’ and ‘Certificates & secrets’ pages.
• Grant Permissions: After obtaining your credentials, you’ll grant the necessary ‘Files.Read.All’ permissions via Microsoft Graph API to allow your website to access the files. Our guide details how to do this in the ‘Request API permissions’ section.
• Configure the ÌÇÐÄVlog Plugin: Finally, head to the ‘Plugins’ area of your WordPress dashboard, locate the ‘Smart OneDrive Files’ plugin, and enter the credentials you obtained from Azure into the ‘OneDrive Settings’.

ÌÇÐÄVlog OneDrive Integration Guide

For the complete, easy-to-follow instructions with all the necessary visuals, including screenshots of the ‘Add a client secret’, ‘Select Microsoft Graph’, ‘Select delegated permissions’, ‘Add permissions’, and ‘Grant admin consent’ stages, please therefore visit our dedicated help guide:

Overall, we’re confident that this new OneDrive integration will be a valuable addition to your ÌÇÐÄVlog School Website, thereby enhancing communication and collaboration for your entire school community.

If, however, you have any questions or need assistance, our support team is always ready to help!

What else do we offer?

We also offer Active Directory sync services, check them out over here: /microsoft-active-directory-sync/

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