Teams lesson cover

[forkies]

We use SDS to create Teams from Sims. When staff our absent/isolating I am now being asked to add the covering staff/supply staff on the Team so they can either teach the students who are isolating or to show the students who are in class on a laptop the Teams lesson from the teacher who is remotely teaching if isolating without sypmtoms.

 

How are you all dealing with this? From what I understand, if I add a person on Teams and then run SDS it will remove them as they are not on Sims. So we are looking like we will have to forget SDS and go manual to avoid wiping out our manual changes.

 

Further, each morning, we will have to manually assign the cover/supply staff to each class they are covering. I can see this taking a lot of admin time each morning and with students chaning sets or joiners.

 

Are you also removing the covering/supply staff from the groups when they are no longer covering (the next day or week)?

 

Feedback on what you are doing regards this and how much time it is taking would be appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Tom

[psydii]

This should get you started:

 

1) connect to azuread and microsofteams in powershell

 

2) foreach ($class in (get-azureadgroup -SearchString "CLASSNAMEPATERNMATCH")){Add-TeamUser -GroupId $class.objectid -User COVERTEACHERUPN -Role Owner}

 

Further thoughts:

Have a cover group, and then sitck a foreach (teacher in govergroup{add-teamuser etc etc} inside the original foreah loop

For cover teachers who are transietn (i.e. external supply, and not regulars) have some dedicated cover accounts in the cover group. Change the password to the cover accounts each evening and send the new details to who ever briefs the supply teachers each morning.

 

We have kept this to a minimum mostly by having isolating teachers teach from home, and getting a student in the classroom to sign into teams to recieve the remote lesson. However for when the teacher is actually unwell (or on special/discresionary leave) the cover teacher steps in.

 

We have run 200+ periods using variations on the above. after grantign the cover teacher group access to all classes we haven't really had to be involved. (rotating cover teacher passwords is something we have done for years anyway)

Edited October 6, 2020 by psydii

[chazzy2501]

SDS won't affect manually applied users was my understanding. I use CSV syncing so maybe it's different.

[forkies]

SDS won't affect manually applied users was my understanding. I use CSV syncing so maybe it's different.

 

New issue is I have a teacher who is on SDS csv newly assigned to a team but when the sync completes he is not being assigned to the group, have looked and all is correct on the CSVs but SDS isnt updating it!

 

I thought I saw somewhere that it removes those who come off the list, so assumed this would affect manual additions too. I will give it a try.

[forkies]

This should get you started:

 

1) connect to azuread and microsofteams in powershell

 

2) foreach ($class in (get-azureadgroup -SearchString "CLASSNAMEPATERNMATCH")){Add-TeamUser -GroupId $class.objectid -User COVERTEACHERUPN -Role Owner}

 

Further thoughts:

Have a cover group, and then sitck a foreach (teacher in govergroup{add-teamuser etc etc} inside the original foreah loop

For cover teachers who are transietn (i.e. external supply, and not regulars) have some dedicated cover accounts in the cover group. Change the password to the cover accounts each evening and send the new details to who ever briefs the supply teachers each morning.

 

We have kept this to a minimum mostly by having isolating teachers teach from home, and getting a student in the classroom to sign into teams to recieve the remote lesson. However for when the teacher is actually unwell (or on special/discresionary leave) the cover teacher steps in.

 

We have run 200+ periods using variations on the above. after grantign the cover teacher group access to all classes we haven't really had to be involved. (rotating cover teacher passwords is something we have done for years anyway)

 

Thanks, the issue is getting the data in a format that works. I am going to be sent a list in some scribbles and so the time consuming bit will be actually entering the data.

 

It is just as much the staff who are employed as the ones who will be external to cover, so Teacher A may be covering 2 lessons one day but then its Teacher F that is covering that group the next day. Along with Supply 1 in between. A right mess and means assigning various teachers/cover accounts to various Teams and changing it every day based on a list I will get at 8.15am in a rubbish format to be ready by 8.45am!

 

Then it is removing them afterwards, keeping track of what needs removing and when, as some will be covering longer than others. We don't want them all getting notifications from the other Teams when they are no longer teaching that group.

[leegcvcc]

Do you have a specific Cover admin person? Maybe add that person to Owner of all Teams and when the cover person is known, the Cover person can add the cover staff to the required teams? May not work or might!

We have this issue and it's been agreed for the absent staff to email the cover work to the cover admin even if it's been set on teams to avoid overheads of adding to Teams.

If a staff member is added as an Owner, it will get removed overnight if not timetabled. They can be added as members which will not remove them overnight, but they are limited to members permissions, which could be all they need. Adding them as Owners negates the need to delete them later on.

 

There is a setting in SDS that won't remove Owners if input manually. Salamander did this for us, so it's part of a script or the CSV files, so I can't help tell you where it is. Hope that helps a bit

[forkies]

Going to have a meeting tomorrow, but I think this is what I am going to propose:

-Teachers isolating not symptomatic, to check cover list and invite in the covering teacher (saves us adding the cover teachers to the teams).

-Teachers unwell, then supply teacher to be added to the teams - list from Cover Manager to be clear on this. Should be a lot less of this so much easier to manage.

-Head of years to be owners on all form groups so they can arrange cover of these Teams as they occur first thing and more of a pastoral related management concern.

 

Further, I have tested and if I manually add a Owner they are not removed as you said, so that is positive.