From DB Primary Wiki

Creating Accounts

Creating Single Accounts

From the admin page simply browse to the relevent folder, click the "New Pupil" button, and fill in the details. Be sure to tick the "Safemail" checkbox to ensure no external emails can be sent/received.

1. Log in as a Teacher or Superadmin
2. Click on Administration from the homepage

3. On the Administration screen you will now see the Staff and Pupils folders, click on the + to expand them. If you are creating a pupil, choose an existing intake folder or create a new one then click New pupil

4. The next screen is where you can enter the details for the new pupil. This is split into 4 sections

User Details - Personal information such as name
Password - The initial password for the pupil to log in, you can also tick the Lock Password box to prevent the pupil from changing their password.
Account Details - This will allow an account to be multi login, multi-login will allow the same account to be logged into more than one computer at the same time without being logged out. You can also set the account to be in Safemail. Safemail will prevent the pupil from emailing anyone outside of the school and will also stop potentially harmful externam email reaching the pupils account.
Appearance - This is where you can choose the colour scheme and theme for the pupil. The Starter theme is for the younger children and the Improver theme is a more mature theme with more functions. Teacher theme should only be used for staff accounts.

5. After you have entered all the details click on Save The pupil will now be able to log in with the username and password you have specified.

Creating a manual parent account

1. Log in as a Teacher or Superadmin
2. Click on Administration from the homepage

3. On the Administration screen you will now see the Staff,Pupils and Parents folders, click on the + to expand them. If you are creating a parent, click New parent

4. The next screen is where you can enter the details for the new parent

Enter the user details for the parent.

If you would like to allow the parent to read their child's email, tick the Can see childs email box

Be sure to select a Parent theme from the right hand side.

5. After you have entered all the details click on Save The parent will now be able to log in with the username and password you have specified.

Linking a child to the parent account

Click here for instructions on how to link pupils to their parent accounts.

Creating a manual governor or support staff account

Follow the steps mentioned above in 'creating single accounts'. Governor and Support Staff Accounts carry similar rights. They do not have access to the administration area and hence cannot create or edit accounts or communities.

For an overview of permissions, according to type of account view the permissions spreadsheet here.

Creating Multiple Accounts

Pupil Accounts

There are two steps to creating multiple accounts:

1) create a file that lists the accounts that you want to create;

2) upload this file to the platform, and follow the instructions

To download an example spreadsheet with all the column headings already entered, please click here. Just overwrite the example field values with your own ones.

Preparing your data files

The easiest way to create the file of accounts is using a spreadsheet, eg Excel. The information is a simple table, with each row describing one account.

The first line of the spreadsheet should contain the column headings.

There are three columns which you must include in all files, and a number of other optional ones that you can use to specify exactly how the new accounts should be set up.

A spreadsheet containing just the compulsory columns would look like this:

- Admission Number

This column is used to hold the number in your school's management information system (MIS) for the pupil.

It's used to help keep your DB Primary accounts and your MIS consistent.

The column must be in the spreadsheet, and where possible you should include this number, but you can leave it blank if you don't know it.

(The admission number can be set in the account later, after it's been created, if this is more convenient)

- First name, Last name

The pupil's names.

If you imported this data into DB Primary, accounts would be created for any users that didn't already exist. A username and password would be created for each new account. The users would be created in the "pupils" group.

Any accounts in this list that do already exist will be checked, and their names would be changed if the ones in this file are different from those stored in DB Primary. This means that files can be used to correct or update users as well as creating them.

(The details of how you import this file will be described below.)

Saving the file

Once you've entered your data, you can save it as a file that can be imported into DB Primary. Simply select Save in your spreadsheet.

The file can be in Excel form (.xls or .xlsx), or as a "comma-separated variable" (.csv) file. There is no real difference as far as DB Primary is concerned, but saving the spreadsheet directly is simpler.

A more typical spreadsheet

Usually you would provide a few more columns, to specify a little more about the user:

Here you have specified a username and password for the new accounts.

Setting Passwords and Usernames

If the password field is omitted, DB Primary will automatically generate 6-letter passwords using a list of common words. Likewise if the username field is omitted, pupil account usernames will be auto-generated in the format first name + first letter of surname. Other accounts will be auto-generated in the format first letter of first name followed by surname. Once you have uploaded your spreadsheet, in the accounts view of the administration screen, click on 'import' once again. Choose 'Archive' to see a list of all the accounts created and all account details including the passwords. Click on 'Export' to view all of this information in a spreadsheet.

Other optional columns

Other optional columns that you can use if you want are:

- Group

A group to put the account in. If there is a year specified, this group will be created inside the year group, for example "Year2005/magpies". In this example, a subfolder 'Year 2005' will be placed within the 'pupils' folder (the forward slash denoting a subfolder). The subfolder 'magpies' will appear within the 'Year2005' folder.

- Nickname

The "display name" used to refer to the user on most pages. This is more likely to be specified for staff accounts (see below) where it can be used to hide the teacher's first name from the pupils. The display name in this case would be set to "Mrs Brown" or whatever.

- Safemail

Use this column to say whether the pupil is in safemail or not. (click here for more info on safemail) Pupils will be in safemail, by default. Use values "yes" or "no" ("y"/"n", "true"/"false" or 1/0 also work)

- Password lock

Use this column to control whether the pupil can change their password or not. The dafault is locked, for pupils. This is a "yes"/"no" field, like safemail.

- Theme

By default, the pupil account will be created with a "Starter" theme. You can use the Theme column to specify the theme you want: "Starter", "Improver". There is also a "Teacher" theme, which would be used for staff accounts.

- Role

If you leave this field blank, the account will be created as a pupil account. The wording to create different roles are as follows:

Pupil account: pupil
Teacher account: staff
Governor account: governor
Parent account: parent
Support Staff account: support

- Colour

If you wish to set a particular colour within the theme, you can specify it here. Values currently defined are "red", "green", "blue", "orange", "violet" and "grey". If no colour is specified, or the value is invalid, the default is green.

- New Password

If you want to bulk-change passwords, you can do this using the New Password field. Any account that already exists (ie it has the same admission number and/or username) will have its password set to the new value specified in this column.

Bulk creating accounts with the picture login theme

You may like to create a group of accounts that all have the picture login theme set as their password. To do this use the column headings shown below:

Under the headings loginTheme and loginSkin enter the word Pictures. Under the heading loginLook enter either Animals or Fruit.

If you leave the password column blank, DB Primary will create a random password consisting of 3 pictures. You can define the length of password yourself, by placing a number from 1 to 5 in the password field.

If you wanted to define you own picture passwords then you can place the corresponding letters (see picture grids below) in the password field on the spreadsheet. The entry in the password field in this case would look something like 'acf':

Once you have imported the accounts, the following report will be shown:

The letters in the above detail (next to the word password) correspond to different pictures as shown in the picture grid image above.

Next, click on Archive to show the passwords on the DB Passports:

Staff Accounts

Staff accounts are specified in the same way. The main difference is that the "Admission Number" field should be renamed "Staff Code".

Remember that this column is required, even if there are no values in it (though we recommend that you do provide the values, as it helps keep your systems in synch).

So a typical staff account list would be like this:

You would not specify a year for teachers, though you can give a subgroup if you like. The accounts will be created in "staff/subgroup".

To download an example spreadsheet with all the column headings already entered, please click here. Just overwrite the example field values with your own ones.

Governor Accounts

Governor accounts can be set up in a similar way to staff accounts. You will need to keep the Admission number heading, although it is not necessary to enter any data in this column. You should add a column named "Role" and the role specified as 'governor'.

As with teachers accounts, you would not specify a year.

It is worth keeping in mind that if any governors also have parent accounts you will need to create a different username for their governor account. For example, they already have a parent username of psmith, you could provide them a username of psmithgov for their governor account.

Parent Accounts

You can create parent accounts in the same way. An account will be created as a parent if it is "linked" to one or more child accounts:

Up to 6 children can be specified per parent; the columns would be headed Child1, Child2 etc. Note:Although you can enter 'parent' and 'child' in the 'Role' column, it is not strictly necessary: a parent account will be recognised by the fact that it has an entry under a "Child" column and if nothing is entered in the role column, the account is created as a pupil account. For your records however, it may be advisable to define the role of each account.

Here Mike Daniels is linked to Lucy Daniels, so will be created as a parent of Lucy.

The children are ideally specified using their admission numbers. If you're not using admission numbers, their usernames (in this case ("ldaniels") can be used instead. For an example of spreadsheet with all the column headings you need click here. Just overwrite the field values with your own values.

It will also be advisable to add in an extra column headed 'theme' and set the field values to 'parental'.

The child and parent accounts can be created in the same file. Or, parent accounts can be created later, linking to pupil accounts that already exist.

Deactivating Accounts

You can also set up a file to tell DB Primary to deactivate some accounts, for example when a student has left. Note that these acounts are deactivated, not deleted, so they can be reactivated later if required.

There are two columns that can be used. You would normally use one or the other, rather than both:

- Deactivate

A simple "yes"/"no" flag. Any existing accounts that have "yes" specified will be deactivated.

- Date of leaving

If a date is specified here that is in the past, the account will be deactivated.

Automatically generating the file

You can also create the account file by running a suitable report on your MIS, and saving the result as a spreadsheet or CSV file. This is the recommended way to create the file, as it ensures that your MIS and DB Primary are in synch -- especially if you run frequent imports to update your accounts.

Importing the file

Once you have the spreadsheet or CSV file (see "Saving the File" above), you can then import it into DB Primary as follows:

Log in, and ensure you're on your homepage. From here, click on the Administration tab in the Quicklinks menu.

You will then be taken to the Administration page. Click on the Import button in the toolbar.

The next screen will give you some general information on the Import process and also offer an Archive button which will take you to reports of previous account imports. Please also note that there is also a link in brackets (Click here for more info on file formats) which will bring up this wiki page in a pop-up window, if you want to check anything.

Click Next

You will now be prompted to upload the CSV or spreadsheet (.xls) file that you created previously. Click Browse and select your file.

When you have selected your file, click Next

The system will process the file, and will display a summary of actions that are required. Any errors found in the file, or with the requested actions, are also displayed here.

Hopefully, the summary of the accounts that would be created or deleted is what you'd expect to see. If so, you can click Import to actually perform the actions and create the accounts. This will take you to Reports and the Archive below.

Otherwise, if the system is saying it wants to create or delete an account that you weren't expecting, you can click on Full Details to see a more detailed description of the actions. For even more explanation, you can use the Explain button to see how the system matched the accounts in your file with those already in DB Primary.

Account Matching

Each account mentioned in your file will be displayed, with any matching accounts that are found in DB Primary. If there are no matching accounts (that is, no accounts with the same admission number or username), then the list will show that a new account will be created.

Other accounts that have the same or similar names will also be listed. You can change the way that accounts are matched by selecting an alternative match and clicking the Recalculate button.

Once the accounts that match or are to be created are correct, click Back to return to the signup process.

Reports and the Archive

When the import has finished, any new accounts that have been created will be listed, along with their usernames and passwords. The usernames might not be exactly the same as those in the input file; for example, if a username was given that already existed, a new one will be created ("wibble1" rather than "wibble")

You can click the Export button to save a file containing these accounts and their usernames/passwords. You can also use the Archive button to see older accounts; each time an import is performed a report file is stored in an archive.

Reports are currently kept for three months. Archived reports can also be exported, which allows you to retrieve older accounts' passwords. But note that the owner of the account might have changed their password since this report was saved...

Creating "Passports" for new users

Please click here to find out more.

Exporting Accounts to a spreadsheet

You can export a list of accounts to a spreadsheet with a single click from the account administration screen.

To the right of each group there is a spreadsheet icon simply click on this and your spreadsheet will open for you.

Adjusting Your Password Strength

On the school tab of the Admin page, the “password strength” parameter gives the user control over the "tightness" of the checks made when a password is entered or edited. As Admin you can choose the password strength to be set from low to maximum or you can choose custom settings by selecting "custom" from the dropdown menu.

Click the "Details" button to bring up the password checking control page.

Change the settings in the topmost dropdown, labelled "All".

The other individual settings will change to match. Their descriptions will show the meaning of the current setting.

Return to the School page. The value shown in the Password Strength will match the setting just made.

Cloning Accounts

An account clone function could be used to support:

creating accounts from template accounts
migrating accounts from other schools

Creating the Template

You may want to create an account template that already has a number of features pre-set. For example, you may want the children in one class to come to their accounts fresh with group & community memberships, work in their my files area, a blog message, passwords, themes, colours already set.

To do this first create an account to use as a template for new accounts. Give the account a username and first/last names that indicate its purpose, eg something like "Student Template".

It should be created in a sub-group (eg a class or year group).

Set its password to something default like "changeme".

Make sure that the account does NOT have an MIS ID value set.

Optionally you could enter a welcome message in the account's blog, upload files to the 'My Work' area and add to a community or communities.

Cloning the Template

Create an MIS import file (CSV or spreadsheet) with the usual columns, plus a "Template" column.

To create your accounts you will need to specify a minimum of admission number, username, firstname and lastname. You will also need a new column 'template' in which you specify the path to the template account. You can find this by logging into the template account and copying the path from the address bar on the template account homepage. This will be the part that comes after the school address (ending dbprimary.com/).

In the spreadsheet, as well as the basic obligatory fields you can include as many or few details as you wish: password, theme/colour, group, year, class etc.

Import the MIS file.

Check that the preview shows the accounts as "CLONE PUPIL ... USING TEMPLATE path".

Run the import and confirm that the accounts have been created.

Exporting Files to another Account

The archive facility allows you to save files that appear in a gallery or 'mywork' area. These can then be uploaded from your desktop or server to another account's mywork area or another community's gallery. They can also be extracted to your PC if you wish.

When logged in as Administrator navigate to the admin view of the gallery you wish to archive from. Choosing 'archive' will generate a zipfile archive of all the files in the gallery.

A dialogue box will appear. Choose where to save the zipped media file. Within the zip file there will also be an extra file, called $manifest.json. This is a list of "extra information" about the files.

If you would like to copy these files, navigate to the admin view of the mywork area or gallery you wish to copy to and upload the archived zipfile by choosing the "Upload" button.

Browse for the file and again select 'upload'. Once uploaded open the archive file and click on the 'extract' button. The file will have the extension 'archive_(community name)' or 'archive_(username)'.

Extracting the zipfile will transfer all the media files in the archive, to the gallery or mywork area you are in. If any of the new file names clash with existing files the new files will be renamed.

Once extracted you can now delete the uploaded zip file.

Any links which were in the original gallery will also be re-created.

You can extract any zipfile, not just one generated by the Archive button. Media objects will be created for any files in the zipfile which are of a known type. Any others will be ignored.

Migrating Accounts from a Feeder School

The account Transfer Tool allows you to make copies of accounts from a feeder school, for example when a user is transferring from that school into yours.

The user's work and blog are copied into the new account. The original accounts in the other school are not affected.

When linking your school, be sure to set the school you wish to transfer the account to 'to a school which we feed'.

(For information on setting up links between schools visit our Link Schools help page.)

In the accounts admin page click on the “Transfer” button.

Once you have selected a school, an account selection tree and a password field will be shown.

Select one or more accounts from the other school and choose whether you would like those accounts entered into a pre-existing target group or not.

Normally, transferred accounts keep their original password, but you can choose to enter a new password by entering an override in the next box.

You can also choose whether to transfer all emails associated with that account.

To override other details, use Export to create an account file, which you can modify before importing it on the main admin page.

Click the Transfer button to transfer the accounts to the other school. You will now see a report summary showing which accounts have been transferred.