[Account Management] - Policies and Procedures

[Planehazza]

Apologies if this is the wrong section.

 

So we've just had SalamanderSoft implemented which links SIMS to our AD for account provisioning and Timetable > Calendar syncing. Pretty handy for students and teachers alike.

 

My question is more in line with policies and handling of new starters.

 

We are secondary education with two schools and ~3500 people. When a new student is added to SIMS, an account is generated in AD with a unique password which, currently, is spat out to a CSV file. I'm looking for ways to streamline this further and, obviously, in a more secure way. Forms and Flows would be interesting and I know a lot of universities (where account numbers are much higher) use an activation portal, but this is probably beyond what we need.

 

If possible, could you outline your onboarding/offboarding processes? Looking for ideas on how to distribute user accounts to new starters securely etc.

 

Sorry, it's a bit of an open ended question, so I'm hoping once the ideas start flowing and I can see how others handle it, I can narrow it down further.

Edited January 18, 2022 by Planehazza

[enjay]

an account is generated in AD with a unique password which, currently, is spat out to a CSV file.

 

We stopped doing that, the unique password causes huge delay getting everyone logged in. We tried using date of birth for a year, thinking it was a good secret value as students wouldn't know each other's dates of birth, but we also found they don't know their own! All student accounts are now created with the password matching their username. All our Year 7s log in on their induction day, so there's very little opportunity for them to change someone else's password as a joke, and if that does happen, teachers can quickly reset that single password.

[Mako]

Also Salamander (as of last year) but even before then, students get the same password. It just makes it easier. As above all Y7s get logged in on induction day so all passwords are changed then. Any issues are picked up on the day. You quickly know if someone has logged in as someone else, as that person will stick their hand up and say their password isn't working.

 

A spreadsheet of usernames and the password (of students) are given to the relevant staff dealing with the induction process. The biggest issue I've faced in recent years is the inability of students to spell their own name.

 

Staff are different, and get a unique password, but you tend to have more one-to-one with new staff.