School settings workflows

Board profile, school information, brandbook, grading scale, message templates, data quality, and who may change each.

Platform & access guide for day and boarding schools.

Last updated August 29, 2026

Settings are school-wide and mostly one-off. Work through them before go-live, roughly in the order below, because several of them rewrite documents and emails that are awkward to reissue. A grading scale changed after report cards are out, or a brandbook applied after the public site is published, both mean going back over work that was already signed off.

Before go-live

Setting	Path	When	Who may change it
Board and curriculum profile	/settings/board-profile	First, before grading or calendar work	Platform Admin or Admin
School information	/settings/school-info	Day one	Platform Admin, Principal, Vice Principal, Admin
Brandbook	/settings/brandbook	Before the public site goes live	Same four roles
Grading scale	/settings/grading-scale	Before the first report card	Platform Admin or Admin
Library rules	/settings/library	Before circulation opens	Librarian staff type, or Platform Admin
Message templates	/settings/message-templates	Before any fee or admission email	Leadership, Admin, or staff on a committee
Exam notifications	/settings/exam-notifications	Before the first session is published	Platform Admin, Principal, Vice Principal
Email test	/settings/email-test	Gate on all outbound mail	Platform Admin or Admin

What the board profile actually does

Applying a preset for CBSE, ICSE, IB, IGCSE, Cambridge, American or International is not a cosmetic choice. It overwrites the stored grading scale, sets the school board label and timezone, and - when the calendar system changes - deletes the generated term start, term end, exam and holiday events for the current year and regenerates them for the new system. Any staff user can open the page, but applying a profile requires Platform Admin or Admin, and it fails if no year is marked current.

Ongoing

/settings/data-quality runs four checks: active students with no class, duplicate login emails, academic years with no terms, and active classes with no students. Run it after every bulk import.
Change the grading scale between terms rather than inside one, so cards issued in the same year stay comparable.
Re-test SMTP after any mail credential change; the result is written to the activity trail either way.
/settings/seed runs demo seed scripts and is limited to Platform Admin. It exists for development and demonstrations, not for a live school.
/settings/school-selector changes which school a Platform Admin is administering, and nothing else. No other role can open it.

Common questions

Quick answers in plain language.

Which settings can a Principal change, and which need a Platform Admin?+

A Principal or Vice Principal can edit school information, the brandbook and message templates, and can configure exam notifications. The grading scale, the board profile, the seed page, the school selector and the SMTP test are limited to Platform Admin, with Admin also allowed on the grading scale, the board profile and the SMTP test. Library settings follow the Librarian staff type rather than a role.

What does the data quality page check, and what does it not?+

Exactly four things: active students with no class membership, user email addresses used more than once, academic years with no terms defined, and active classes with no students. It is a counting snapshot with a link to the screen where each is fixed. It does not check unlinked parents, missing fee structures, or timetable gaps.

Is it safe to switch the board profile on a school that is already running?+

Treat it as a rebuild rather than a preference change. It replaces the grading scale outright, and a change of calendar system removes the generated term, exam and holiday events for the current year before regenerating them. Do it during initial setup, or in a planned window with the grading scale and calendar reviewed straight afterwards.